All The Little Lights
by emmagnetised
Summary: Unlikely friendships. War elephants. Wingmen. Glitter. Asgardian liquor. Space travel. When the dust settles and all is said and done, Earth is safe and the Avengers are together. Maggie learns to live with a team who becomes a family. (Spin-off AU of "The Wyvern". Go read that first, I promise you'll enjoy it)
1. It's a Start (Part One)

**It's a Start (Part One)**

**A/N: Okay, so – as you know, the Wyvern is on hiatus. Picture this series as a 'happily ever after', if you will. I'm not going to get into the details of who they fought and how, but essentially this one shot begins with the Avengers victorious. Whether you want to picture them having beaten Thanos at the end of Infinity War and brought Tony (and Peter) back from space, or picture it as a happy ending after Endgame, have at it. No Carol yet (I just saw the movie literally hours ago - it's amazing!). She might turn up later. Pretend she's busy somewhere else.**

**But key thing: everyone is alive! Everyone who got snapped or died, _including _my boys Vision and Loki. Also Clint and Scott are back in the game. I know it's vague, but the premise doesn't matter – what does is that they're together.**

**The title of this series comes from the Passenger song _All The Little Lights. _Give it a listen if you're interested.**

**15/09/19 ETA: The first 10 one shots were written post _Infinity War_, so Endgame details are not included (save for some minor edits). Post _Endgame _is after the 11th one shot.**

* * *

When the fighting was over and the dust settled, they found themselves in Wakanda. Exhausted, contemplating the magnitude of all they'd done, they stood or sat in a tall-ceilinged, light-filled room in the royal palace. Each and every one of them was there: from Maggie and Tony to the fugitive Avengers, to Thor, to Doctor Strange, to the Wakandans, to the assemblage of odd-looking aliens who called themselves Guardians. Maggie was too tired to count, but she guessed there were at least twenty people – humans, androids, aliens – filling the beautiful glass, gold, and black metal chamber. No one said a word.

Maggie had spoken to about half of them and fought alongside all of them, and a part of her reflected that it was so _strange _to seem them all here together, this bloody and tired collection of people she'd known or read about. She kept an eye on her Avengers (Rhodey, Tony, Vision, and Peter) but there was one person she couldn't tear her eyes away from.

Bucky.

They'd reunited during the fighting, but it had all been so quick – a short, tearful exchange before they were thrown once more into violence. Since the end of the battle they hadn't let each other out of their sights. Now they stood side by side, but not so close as to be noticeable. Maggie smiled every time she looked at him, and when he caught her looking his own mouth curved into a grin as if it was infectious. He stood tall in his navy blue uniform jacket and combat pants, and as she looked at him his new black-and-gold arm came up to scratch his stubbled jaw. The sight of him _there_, in front of her with his long hair and crinkled eyes and warm skin set her heart pounding.

Out of the silence came a strong, startlingly light-humored voice: "Shall we have shawarma then?" Thor. He stood by the window, a smile crooking his mouth as he clapped a hand on Tony's shoulder.

And the Avengers _laughed. _Not all of them though, in fact… Maggie realized with a blink that it was the first Avengers, the ones who had been there for Loki and S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Battle of New York: Tony, Barton, Romanoff, Banner, and Steve. They laughed, tired and overwhelmed, and Maggie couldn't help the tears that sprang to her eyes at the sound.

The rest of them – _all Avengers, _she realized – looked on, and as Maggie watched, smiles lifted lips and crinkled eyes one by one across the room. Rhodey nudged Sam, and they grinned at each other. After all that had happened, all that they'd done, there was _laughter. _

Maggie met Bucky's grey-blue eyes. He smiled at her. Her heart skipped a beat and she remembered, in a flash of memories that thudded through her, the first time she'd laughed after HYDRA: she and Bucky had been stealing away on a container ship when he'd said something funny and she had just laughed, easy as breathing, and he'd looked at her like he'd never seen her before. Back then it had felt like proof that she wasn't a weapon, felt like the world truly had shifted on its axis.

Today felt the same. The corners of Bucky's eyes crinkled as he looked back at her, surrounded by their friends… and Maggie realized that they had _won._

"I'm afraid we don't have shawarma," came another male voice, and Maggie turned to look at T'Challa, half out of his armor as his eyes twinkled in Thor's direction. His bodyguard – Okoye – hovered over him, and his sister sat on a stool to his left. "But we can throw a party worthy of Earth's saviours."

Maggie's gaze swept across the room, catching glances and smiles and sighs. She saw the careful gaps, the distances – Steve and Tony stood on opposite sides of the room. But everywhere she looked there were allies and friends smiling at one another: Dr Strange shook hands with Hope Van Dyne, Peter stood by the alien with alarmingly luminescent antennae, Wanda and Barton embraced.

"Ah, revels," Thor said with a knowing nod. "Well met, my old friends." He looked around, his eyes lighting on the Wakandans and other new faces. "I see the Avengers have grown ever mightier in my absence."

Steve grinned at his old friend, and then a second later realized that Thor was asking for introductions. "Right, uh…" he took a breath. "We're in a country called Wakanda, this is their King T'Challa… and the Princess Shuri." Out of the corner of her eye Maggie saw Tony tense at every word Steve spoke.

T'Challa nodded. "You are very welcome in our home, Thor Odinson."

Thor bowed his head in reply, and Steve got started on introducing all the people Thor hadn't met yet. When he got to Maggie and Bucky, who stood at a strategic point by the door, he hesitated. They stood close to one another but not close enough to stand out, and their faces were neutral as everyone in the room turned to look at them. "Uh, you actually have heard about these two…" Steve's eyes flickered to Tony, who was busy brushing a speck of dust off his shoulder.

Thor's warm eyes assessed Bucky and Maggie curiously, then widened. "Your fallen shield-brother, and Tony's infant sister!"

Maggie frowned and thought about protesting the _infant_ thing, but she was too tired. She settled for waving, her mouth curving into a smile. "Hi, it's nice to meet you."

Thor crossed the room to shake her hand (or rather, grasp her wrist in some Asgardian type of greeting). "Likewise. You flew bravely today, fair Wyvern, and I am lucky to call you shield-sister."

"Back at you," she replied with a grin. Thor seemed warm and jovial enough, but she could see the weight of years and grief in his eyes. She wondered that he had the strength to speak at all, let alone greet all his new allies.

* * *

When Thor turned to Bucky, Bucky held out his hand for a shake and got his wrist gripped instead. Thor had kicked ass on the battlefield, so this new, friendly side to the god was a nice surprise.

"It is an honor to meet a fellow warrior. And may I congratulate you on your robot arm," Thor said gravely.

"Thanks," Bucky said, the corner of his mouth quirked up. "I hear you've got a pretty swell robot eye."

Thor laughed, and a little more of the tension in the room seemed to ease. Bucky thought he should maybe be alarmed about meeting a god, but after all the weirdness that had been his life lately he could only accept it with a shrug.

The others started talking again and Bucky half paid attention as T'Challa offered them all rooms in the palace for the night. To be honest he hadn't thought of much once the fighting ended other than _Meg. _

He'd seen countless footage and photographs and news clippings about her over the past few months, and exchanged daily Kimoyo messages, but nothing compared to having her real and standing tall beside her. Her face was neutral and her arms crossed as she eyed the proceedings, but she couldn't seem to stop herself from stealing glances at him. He could watch the corners of her mouth twitch up and her eyes gleam all day.

But maybe not _all _day. He was dead on his feet, here.

At the prospect of showers and food everyone began to break off. After a quick glance he and Meg turned for the door, but then she hesitated. Bucky glanced over his shoulder as he followed the others out.

Steve and Tony hadn't moved. Stark leaned back against the tall windows overlooking the city, his arms crossed over his chest, and Steve pretended to be inspecting the carvings in the metal wall. Their faces were taut, and though they didn't look at each other Bucky could practically see the tension crackling between them. He made to turn around but Meg had already moved again and allowed herself to be swept into the corridor with the tide of superheroes.

And then she stopped just outside the door. Bucky, who'd been trying to follow everyone else down the corridor, shot her a questioning look. Meg uncrossed her arms and seemed to take him in once more: her eyes tracked from his arm, to his uniform, to his face, and her face softened. She looked so different now - not in a bad way, but something about her face was a little more open, a little easier to laugh. He'd seen time and time again that when Meg took control of her own life, she became more herself with every passing day.

She crossed the shining corridor floor between them in three quick strides and leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. The warmth of her touch nearly cracked his tired heart, but then she stepped back. The corridor was clear now, everyone having headed up to their rooms.

"Go on, rest," she murmured. "I'm going to stay for a bit."

His eyes darted toward the door. "Keep an eye on things?"

"Exactly."

Bucky closed his eyes and sighed. He wanted to stay, to be with her and to make sure Steve and Tony didn't kill each other, but he knew that he'd probably just make things worse.

He opened his eyes. "I love you," he murmured, and almost unconsciously his metal hand rose to hover beside her face, curved in the shape of her cheek. Her warm brown eyes watched him steadily. He could still hardly believe that she was finally in front of him, especially after... He swallowed. "I was so worried–"

Maggie tilted her head into his palm and reached up to cover the metal hand with her own. "I love you too. And so was I." She grinned and pulled his hand away to kiss the palm. This hand was more sensitive than the last one, picking up so much more than pressure. He nearly shivered. "We've got the rest of our lives to worry about each other, now."

His eyes _burned._

"See you later," she whispered, then with obvious effort let go of his hand. For a few long moments they just stared at each other, wanting, until he reluctantly turned and strode up the corridor. Just before he turned the corner, he looked back. Their eyes met, dark brown and sea grey, just like so many silent glances they'd shared in their long and complicated past. And Bucky thought: _This is it_. Then he was gone.

* * *

Maggie waited in the corridor outside the large chamber for well over an hour, close enough to hear if things started breaking but far enough that she wasn't eavesdropping. Sometimes she heard raised voices, but that wasn't enough to stir her. She paced, stared out the window at the remarkable gleaming city, and sat on the sleek floor.

Eventually the door opened and an exhausted-looking Tony walked out. His clothes were ragged and stained, but his arc reactor glowed a soothing blue. He strode up the corridor, his brow knitted until he looked up and saw her standing at the end.

He rolled his eyes. "Making sure we don't kill each other?"

"It'd be a shame, after we all just worked so hard to stay alive."

She fell into step beside him as they headed for the futuristic elevators that would take them up to their rooms. When the doors slid shut behind them, Maggie turned and raised her eyebrows at Tony.

He sighed and reached up to rub at the furrow between his brows. "It's a start." He ran the hand through his hair. "It's a start."

Maggie wrapped her arms around him. She didn't know what to say, but it seemed just that action was enough. Tony let her support him, the tension leeching out of his limbs, until they arrived at their level of the palace.

After giving him one more squeeze Maggie strode toward her assigned room as her heart pounded. _It's a start._

* * *

That night, T'Challa and the Wakandans did indeed throw a party 'worthy of Earth's saviours'. What seemed like the entire city gathered in the Golden City's main square, a wide space ablaze with lights and music. The city's tall, gleaming towers stretched into the sky around the square and a wide river flowed by one side as Maggie arrived at the bustling square. She'd been to a few parties since emerging from HYDRA's grip, but nothing like this – nothing where the music flowed so freely, the laughter and conversation was so honest, where strangers danced and old friends partied together like they'd never fought at all. And she knew the reason: every single person here was celebrating the fact that they were _still alive. _

Clean, fed, and rested, Maggie approached the party and reveled in the feeling of music thudding in her veins. She'd been provided with a light, gauzy shirt and a flowing patterned skirt, and Wakanda's warm breeze drifted against her skin as she walked.

The party drew her in like a magnet and she found herself in the thick of it – she shared drinks with Thor and the crowd of aliens, laughing as she realized they were just as funny and foolhardy as any humans. She chatted with Barton and Scott Lang, teased Sam, asked Dr Strange impertinent questions about his cloak, dared Peter (still wearing his mask, the paranoid boy) to try the new and unusual foods. T'Challa threw a great party: tables and tables of food surrounding the square, a fire blazing in the center, as music lilted and weaved over the crowd.

Steve and Tony orbited each other, not exactly friendly but not at all hostile, and the others drank and laughed as if they'd never exchanged harsh words or blows. As if they'd all forgiven and made up. _And maybe they have_, thought Maggie. She'd seen hints of more than enough private conversations taking place in corridors and corners. People with years of history between them were finally, _finally _talking.

Speaking of years of history… Bucky made his way through the party. He was more often by Steve's side than not, looking devastating in tight-fitting brown trousers and a soft green shirt. He'd twisted half his hair into a messy bun at the back of his head as if he was _trying _to make her go insane.

But they didn't approach each other. When Bucky first arrived by Steve's side Maggie was standing with Tony, Rhodey, Natasha, and the alien called Nebula, her head tipped back as she laughed. When she looked back she met Bucky's eyes, blazing blue, but then… his eyes slid to Tony, softened, and he'd walked over to Quill and Vision on the other side of the fire. Maggie sighed.

So they circled. _We've got all the time in the world_, Maggie told herself as she cast another glance across the square to see Bucky watching her. For now, though… everyone had just fought and almost died. It was best to avoid upsetting anyone.

She was standing by the food tables, half-paying attention to a conversation with some Wakandans as she watched Bucky laugh at one of Thor's jokes across the square, when Tony slipped beside her.

"Stop staring at him, Maggie. Just go talk to him."

She looked up sharply, her heart rate doubling.

Tony sighed and waved a hand. He'd managed to find a suit somewhere. "Remember when I said that this whole situation was a moral minefield and I'm tired of treading through it?" She nodded warily, and Tony waved a hand toward Bucky. His eyes flickered. "Don't let me stop you."

Maggie didn't move. She watched her brother closely, taking in every minute shift of his muscles and every fleeting emotion in his eyes. He was… uncertain, she could see, and she just knew he was thinking of that time in the frozen Siberian bunker, of an awful video on a dark screen, of a metal hand clawing at his arc reactor. And yet… he met her eyes, and those memories cleared. He _meant _what he'd said, with no bitterness or resentment. Something had shifted these months since the Siberian bunker, and she suspected it had everything to do with her and how she'd shared her memories and feelings about _Bucky_, and not the Winter Soldier.

Her breath hitched in her throat. "_Thank you_, Tony." Not for any kind of 'permission', because she'd never needed his permission, but for… for wanting her to be happy. Before he could reply she leaned in, kissed him on the cheek, and then darted through the press of dancing bodies.

* * *

"Hello."

The only sign of surprise Bucky gave was the sudden tension in his shoulders before he slowly, slowly turned around. He took in the sight of her only feet away, his eyes roving from her sandals, over her bright Wakandan clothes, up to her face and her warm, steady eyes. For a moment he looked… _overwhelmed_, was the only way she could describe it, and she knew how he felt. They'd been apart so long.

But then he took a breath and those grey-blue eyes that had been so often sad, confused, afraid, became warm. He smiled, and it took Maggie's breath away.

"Fancy seeing you here," he murmured, and the sound of his voice curled up in her chest like a lick of flame.

"Hey, Maggie!" Steve's voice: surprised and pleased.

"Hey Steve," she replied, never taking her eyes away from Bucky's face.

There was a beat of silence. Then someone cleared their throat – Sam – and the others moved away.

Bucky's grin remained, mischievous and knowing and _dangerous. _

Maggie straightened her shoulders. "I've come to teach you how to dance."

He cocked his head. "That's very generous of you. Think you know something I don't?"

"I think I know a _lot _of things you don't," she shot back, and took a step toward him. By the fire, dozens and dozens of Wakandans twisted around each other in time with the music.

Bucky matched her step. "You must have had a good teacher then."

She shrugged one shoulder, not even bothering to hide her grin now. "Eh. He fudged the steps."

Bucky swooped, his metal hand sliding around her waist and his flesh hand taking hers, surprisingly gentle. She laughed at his hands on her and his laughter in her ear, and reeled him towards the rest of the dancers with her head spinning with the knowledge that they could finally do this, finally be free. _Forever._

* * *

Because the universe had a sense of humor, Tony ended up by Steve's side once more that night. The two of them stood by the river at the edge of the square, but they didn't look out at the cold, glittering water. Instead they looked in at the people: dancing and drinking and laughing, all alive because they had won_. _

Steve and Tony had patched up the worst wounds that morning in the palace but they had so much more left to discuss – and yet even Tony knew how important it was that they were finally talking. That day in Germany, when Steve had set down Roosevelt's set of pens, had been the last time they'd really talked. And now they were both in a place to listen.

So they talked again by the river, unheard by the raucous party. And as they talked Tony found himself watching Maggie – and Barnes. They'd been dancing the better part of the night, trying to copy the Wakandan steps but not looking very dignified doing it. They didn't seem to care. Right now the two of them were almost doubled over laughing, their faces flushed and the people around them laughing too as if they were infectious. Tony glanced at Steve and saw the super soldier looking just as astonished as Tony felt, as if he'd never seen his friend seem so happy.

Tony looked back to the laughing, dancing pair and understood: Maggie was her own person, whole and happy. She'd made that more than clear to him and to the world. But that was _love_, right there, and when it's right it makes both halves better. Tony knew this.

He also realized that they'd never _stopped _loving each other. Not for a second during those many months they were apart, though they'd stayed apart because the world had no place for them.

But they'd saved the universe – them, and Tony, and Steve, and all the rest of the unusual, remarkable people here. And now, Tony realized, they had to figure out how to live together. Because living apart…

As he watched his sister dance with the man she loved, he knew that living apart wasn't an option any longer.

* * *

That night Maggie stole into Bucky's room and they wrapped themselves up in each other, clinging to each other and to life. And Maggie felt at home.

* * *

**Part 2 will come in a few days, depending on interest! To be honest a lot of these one shots have turned into two or three shots because I literally cannot help myself.**


	2. It's a Start (Part Two)

**It's a Start (Part Two)**

In the morning, without anyone telling them to, everyone gathered once more in the large chamber overlooking the city. Someone had moved a large circular conference table into the center of the room, so one by one people filed in and took a seat at the table. The energy was different today – everyone was well rested, bathed, and thinking clearly (if maybe a little hungover). Everyone chatted, a low murmur, but it was easy words: teasing and catching up with long-distant friends. Silent thoughts seemed to echo off the walls. Soon everyone sat at the table except for the notable absences of Steve, Tony, and the Wakandans.

Maggie and Bucky sat side by side in the sleek metal chairs, their hands clasped under the table.

In Bucky's room that morning, with the gold dawn light streaming through the wide window and gleaming on Bucky's metal arm, they'd lain nose-to-nose and discussed the future. They'd had so many important things to talk about but the sentiment was all the same: _You and me._ Maggie had been afraid to close her eyes, scared that when she did it would all be gone: the soft words, the feel of Bucky warm beside her, the silk sheets tangled around their legs, his metal arm that whirred so quietly she could barely hear it.

In between the serious conversations they laughed; alternating between wrestling and gentle, familiar touches that seemed to say _I remember you._ Maggie ran her fingers over Bucky's beard and yelped when he tried to bite her fingers. She felt like she had those few days after their first kiss: caught up in a heady rush of _Bucky_, and skin-crackling touches, and her heartbeat in her ears.

When they knew they had to climb out of bed and face the world, Maggie had leaned in to kiss Bucky and whispered against his mouth: "No more parting. Whatever we do from here on out, we do it together."

"A mission," Bucky murmured back, his grey-blue eyes still and unfathomably deep.

She smiled. "A team."

She held that promise close to her heart as she looked around the table, Bucky's hand in hers. Vision and Wanda's clasped hands rested on _top _of the table, bridging the divide that had lasted these past few years. To their right sat Thor, yawning over a coffee, and the Guardians – the raccoon and the tree were apparently in the middle of a conversation with Vision, while the others were in various states of wakefulness as Dr Banner attempted to have a conversation about interdimensional physics with them. Natasha, Clint, Scott, and Hope sat in the seats between the Guardians and Bucky, speaking together softly. To Maggie's right sat Dr Strange, prickly and arrogant and so remarkably like her brother that it still startled her. He hadn't attended the party last night, though he had apparently deemed today's meeting worthy of his presence. To his right sat Sam, who laughed as he chatted with Rhodey and Peter (the kid was _still _wearing his mask).

The door swung open, and the air changed. Maggie looked over her shoulder to see Steve and Tony walk in, followed by T'Challa, Shuri, and the Dora Milaje. Bucky squeezed her hand, and she reminded herself to breathe. _It's a start_, Tony had said. Was a start enough?

The Wakandans, Steve, and Tony took the remaining seats at the table, their faces carefully neutral. Tony looked better rested, smart as ever in an expensive suit, and his wounds were healing. Maggie's eyes darted between him and Steve as she tried to read their body language.

There were a few long moments of silence.

Then the raccoon spoke: "Well, this is dramatic," he drawled.

Groot (who had introduced himself to a bewildered Maggie yesterday) elbowed Rocket and growled "I am Groot."

"Agreed," Thor said. "Let's hear what our friends have to say."

Steve, looking remarkably un-flummoxed by the inter-alien interaction, stood up. He wore plain clothes today. Tony leaned back in his seat, apparently content to listen.

Steve took a breath. "We won," he said, and his eyes roved across the people around the table. Maggie distantly wondered if T'Challa had chosen a round table to mimic _the _Round Table of legend. "We won, and that's something to celebrate, but I don't think I'm alone in wondering where we go from here." He took a breath. "We've all been hurt and in pain these past few years. We've hurt each other." He glanced down at Tony, his eyes somber.

Tony seemed to take that as his cue and spread his hands. "We've all done a lot of stupid shit, is what I think my esteemed colleague is trying to say."

A low laugh around the table. Maggie tried to calm her beating heart.

Steve's smile was there-and-gone before he continued: "Tony and I have spoken a few times about that pain, and about how sorry we are." His throat bobbed. "I told Secretary Ross that I wasn't looking for forgiveness, but that wasn't quite true. I wasn't looking for it from _him. _We're…" he gestured around the table. "We're a _good team. _And I think we're willing to try, I think we can learn from our mistakes–"

Tony got to his feet and put a hand on Steve's shoulder. "This is sounding a lot like a 'please, baby, take me back' speech," he quipped, but then shrugged and let his face grow serious. "A _lot _has happened. But what we're trying to say is: being the Avengers, fighting together… that's secondary, we can figure that out. For now, there's a home for all of you back at the Facility. If you want it."

For ten long, silent seconds the words hung in the air. Maggie's ears were ringing. _A home for all of you_. She could hardly breathe, hardly bring herself to turn and look at Bucky, though she could feel his own reaction in the way his fingers twitched and his breathing changed. She stared at the others around the table, taking in wide eyes and exchanged glances.

Rhodey cleared his throat and everyone turned to look at him. "Well I _already_ live there, so it's a yes from me." He shrugged, as if it was that easy, and turned to look at Sam.

Sam also shrugged. "I think everyone knows what I'm going to do."

"It's true, you're a very predictable fanboy," Tony replied, and though Sam scowled at him Maggie felt something heal in the air between them.

Peter actually _raised his hand. _"Well I, um. Already kinda have a home, but–"

Maggie covered her face with her free hand, but Tony just rolled his eyes and said: "We figured you'd keep the same deal, kid. Visits to the Facility only."

Peter breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, Good." Maggie sensed Bucky laughing under his breath.

To Peter's right, Vision and Wanda shared a glance. Maggie watched the complicated unspoken thoughts there, the hesitance in Wanda's eyes and the way Vision bowed his head as if to say _this is yours to decide. _

Maggie's heart twisted. Vision was her friend, and if he and Wanda didn't want to be a part of this…

Wanda's eyes tracked across every face at the table, assessing, before resting on Steve and Tony. "I want to forgive and be forgiven, if it's possible." Her eyes softened, and Maggie remembered that this woman had lost her parents, her country, and her brother. She'd lost so much, and yet: "I want this family. I want to trust again." Vision smiled at her, so gentle and private that Maggie averted her eyes.

Thor straightened in his seat and put one large hand on the table. He'd been all laughter and revelry last night, the life of the party, but Maggie could still see that ageless grief behind his eyes. "My people are scattered throughout the dark corners of the universe as refugees," he said. The sun streaming through the arcing windows illuminated the gold in his hair, and Maggie realized all over again that he was a king_. _"I need to rally them and find them a home. But you are still my team and my friends." He smiled at everyone around the table and nodded once. "I will be back soon."

"You're going to miss us," Tony replied, his arms spread as if to say _can't miss us if you don't go._

"I'm sure I will," Thor smiled.

"What, no manful tears?"

Thor's smile widened. "I won't miss you that much."

Tony pressed a hand to his chest. "Ouch. And with that solid burn, how about the Guardians?"

Quill scratched his head and glanced at his team. "We aren't really… joiners. And our job is, y'know, not here."

"Don't call it a job, you'll give me an allergic reaction," complained Rocket.

The alien called Drax frowned. "It is impossible to be _allergic _to–"

The green alien – Gamora – rolled her eyes and leaned forward. "We've got to head back," she summarized. "_But_ we will give you a way to get in contact us."

"Great!" Steve replied. "Bruce?"

Banner ducked his head and scratched the back of his neck at the sudden attention. "I, uh… yes please."

Out of the corner of her eye, Maggie saw Tony let out a breath. She knew he'd missed his friend over the past few years, but she didn't realize how worried he'd been that Bruce would decide to leave again. She looked back to Banner, caught his eye, and smiled at him. He blinked. They'd met during the fighting, but Maggie was looking forward to getting better acquainted.

"Clint?"

Barton leaned back in his seat and put his hands behind his head. "I'm retired."

A loud groan erupted from all the Avengers who knew him, and he just grinned.

Beside him, Romanoff rolled her eyes and then looked over to Tony. "I'm in." Tony gave her a cocky salute and she rolled her eyes again.

That answer brought everyone's attention across to Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne, one slouched in his chair and the other straight backed and poised. They'd been sharing glances throughout the 'meeting', and Maggie smiled at the fondness on both of their faces.

Lang sat up straighter. "We've gotta get back to our home, too." He glanced at Thor and the Guardians. "I mean it's not as far as, uh, _space_, it's just San Francisco–"

Hope laid a hand over his to stop the rambling. "We're heading home. But call us whenever you need us, and… vice versa." She met Tony and Steve's eyes, and they both nodded.

Now it was Bucky and Maggie's turn. Maggie had been so focused on watching and listening to everyone else's reactions that she hadn't thought about her own answer. Not that she had to think very hard. She shared a glance with Bucky, reading his thoughts from his eyes in the way she always had. He squeezed her hand, and a small smile quirked his mouth. She smiled back.

A second later she turned back to the group at large (_oh, that's a lot of faces_) and nodded once. "We're in."

On the other side of the table Tony shifted his weight, but when Maggie looked over at him he merely gave her an odd, complicated smile.

Steve turned to Dr Strange, on Maggie's right, who just lifted an eyebrow. "No thanks."

Tony rolled his eyes. "Go figure."

Strange opened his mouth again, no doubt to say something cutting about _superhero frathouses _or _I have better things to do_, but T'Challa, ever the diplomat, interrupted. "As discussed, Wakanda considers itself allied with the Avengers. You are all welcome here whenever you wish it."

And that… that was everyone. Maggie's heart pounded as she looked around the table once more, taking in faces familiar and new, in disbelief that it could be so easy to… to make a _beginning. _Her grip tightened on Bucky's hand and he leaned incrementally into her space.

"Well then," Steve said, relief clear in every line of his face. "That's… that's…"

"It's a start," Tony finished for him, and got to his feet again. "Let's go home."

* * *

The rest of the morning was a rush of farewells and dramatic exits. Thor pulled Maggie in for a bone-crushing hug as he went around saying his goodbyes, before hitching a lift with the Guardians back to space.

Bucky spent his morning fare-welling the Wakandans he had gotten to know. Maggie wished she could meet them all, but she was busy arranging everyone's transport back to the States – they had one Quinjet, which should theoretically fit them, but she thought it was probably better if those who could fly under their own steam did. And then she was busy making sure Tony and Dr Strange didn't get in an actual cat fight before Strange portaled back to wherever he came from.

At around noon, they all gathered on the aircraft landing pad – those heading back to the Facility, and those who just needed a lift back to the States (Scott, Hope, Peter, and Clint). The Wakandans stood behind them, resplendent as ever with their rich clothes and Vibranium weapons. Steve and Tony started saying goodbye to T'Challa, and Maggie slipped beside Bucky.

"You're not going on the Quinjet," he murmured, his eyebrows raised.

She nudged him gently. "No. It'll be crowded enough in there with eleven of you – have fun with that, by the way – and my wings are designed for long-distance flight now. Unlike _someone's._" She stared pointedly at Sam, and as if he could sense her gaze he glanced over her shoulder and narrowed his eyes. "Tony, Vision and Rhodey are flying too."

Bucky took a long, slow breath. "I can't believe…" she glanced at his face, squinting in the sun, and her smile softened at the look in his eyes. They hadn't really had much of a chance to discuss their decision and the future of their strange group of friends. They hadn't discussed the fact that they could _be together. _She let her fingers tangle with his.

"Neither can I," she murmured. "I can't wait." He turned to look at her fully, his eyes gleaming, and she grinned up at him.

"Alright, let's move it out!" called Tony, and the gathered Avengers started for the waiting Quinjet. Maggie brought Bucky's hand to her mouth and kissed it before letting go.

"See you on the other side," she grinned.

"Safe flight," he replied with a wink. And with that he followed the rest of the Avengers up the ramp into the Quinjet, leaving Maggie, Rhodey, Vision, and Tony on the landing pad. While the engines flared blue and the ramp rose, Maggie waved to the group inside as they negotiated for sitting space. Bucky was apparently mid argument with Sam for a seat with a view of the window, so the only one who saw her waving was Peter. He perked up and waved back, and then the ramp shut between them.

As one, the Avengers left on the launchpad prepared for takeoff – Maggie's nanotech wings and suit activated in a gleam of metal, and Rhodey and Tony assembled their armor. Vision merely hovered into the air.

"We'll be seeing you around, your highness," Tony called to T'Challa.

"I certainly hope so!" the King replied over the whining engines of the Quinjet as it took off.

"Let's head home," Tony said into their comms, and with a quick thumbs-up at the Princess Shuri (she really wanted to have a longer conversation with the young woman at some point), Maggie kicked into the sky and spread her wings. With her original team by her side and their new additions on the Quinjet roaring ahead of them, she turned for home.

* * *

On the Quinjet, Bucky kept an eye on each inhabitant. They were crowded in, but no one seemed inclined to let old grievances bubble to the surface. He knew mostly everyone – Steve, Romanoff, the Maximoff woman, Wilson, and Barton. He'd met Banner briefly during the fight, and introduced himself to Lang and Van Dyne yesterday. So that left…

"You're the kid," he said, and the kid in the red mask jumped and whirled around in his seat.

"What?" his voice was high, betraying his age.

Bucky cocked his head. "You're that kid we fought in Germany. The one Meg's been training."

"M-Meg?"

"Maggie." They'd only been apart for twenty minutes and he was already missing her. He didn't know how he'd lasted _months_.

The mask's eye lenses widened. "Oh, right! Yeah, I guess I – I guess I am. Wait, you're not angry at me, are you?"

Bucky frowned. "Why would I be angry at you?"

"For Germany." The kid visibly swallowed, and Bucky remembered the kid catching his fist, throwing pieces of airport at him and then kicking him off a balcony.

He shrugged. "If I got angry at everyone who tried to kick my ass I wouldn't have any friends left."

"Oh." The kid blinked: Once. Twice.

Wilson, damn him, leaned over. "How about ripping steering wheels out of people's cars, Barnes? How's that working for you in your quest to make friends?"

Bucky cast his eyes skyward. "Christ, Wilson, let it go."

The kid went back to blinking at them, and out of the corner of his eye Bucky saw Romanoff smirk at him from the cockpit.

This was going to be a long flight.

* * *

"So. Superhero sleepover," Maggie said into the comms, about an hour into their flight home. Vision had flown ahead and Rhodey was covering the rear, so that left she and Tony side-by-side in the sky. It was a bright, clear day, and they soared above the crisp white clouds catching glimpses of the earth below. The sun shone warm on Maggie's outstretched wings.

"Nothing I haven't hosted before," Tony replied.

"Not on this scale, though. There'll be what… ten of us at the Facility? Plus Pepper? And then a whole bunch of visitors?"

"Sounds fun."

Maggie's head cocked, and she looked across at him. His red-and-gold armor held steady in the sky, his repulsors burning bright. The gold face plate remained as inscrutable as ever. "I hear sarcasm, but you… you mean that, don't you?"

His silence told her enough. Tony had always been afraid to voice the things he wanted – the things he _really _wanted, at least.

Maggie turned to look where she was going again, watching the horizon. She thought of all the new people she was about to live with, thought about all the tensions and things they'd have to address. But…

"For what it's worth," she said. "I think it's going to be fun too."

* * *

The Quinjet arrived at the Facility first, so Maggie and the other fliers arrived to see the rest of them milling around on the lawn as if they were too afraid to go inside without being invited.

Tony landed, retracted his armor, and immediately began assigning rooms and explaining the ground rules (apparently the rules were very similar to what they'd been before the other Avengers had become fugitives, though for some reason Tony put extra emphasis on _no coffee grounds in the sink_). Maggie checked the room assignments, and realized that Tony had put Bucky in a room on the exact opposite side of the residential area from her. She glowered at her brother, but he seemed not to notice. _So we need to have a chat about that, apparently._

Tired from the flight, everyone went to their rooms. Maggie went with Bucky to his new living space and helped him get settled in. They had sort of been planning to talk about their new living situation and all the potential difficulties, but one moment they were sitting on the couch facing the window view of the lake (Tony might have put Bucky's room far from Maggie's, but it was still an incredible room), and the next they were asleep, Bucky's metal arm wrapped around Maggie as her head rested on his shoulder.

* * *

Woken by their growling stomachs that evening (thanks, super soldier serum), Maggie and Bucky climbed off the couch and headed for the common area kitchen. They weren't the only ones with that idea: Tony, Pepper, Rhodey, and Steve were already there. Maggie rushed to Pepper and squeezed her until the woman laughingly protested.

Maggie pulled away and gestured to Bucky, who hovered by the doorway. "Pepper, this is Bucky."

Pepper didn't skip a beat. "Bucky, it's nice to meet you. May I call you Bucky?"

Bucky shuffled closer, his eyes darting from Pepper, to Steve, to Tony. "Sure. And…" he swallowed, apparently regaining his composure. "You're Pepper, right? Meg talks about you a lot."

"All good things, I hope," Pepper said with a wry look at Maggie.

Maggie grinned. "I don't think I could say something bad about you if I tried."

Steve leaned forward from his position on one of the leather couches. "How're you doing, Buck?"

"The same as I was six hours ago, Steve," Bucky said with a slight eyeroll.

Tony cleared his throat, and they all turned to look at him. It was still so strange for Maggie to look from Bucky to Tony, in the same room after so long. Tony… wasn't looking at Bucky. "We ordered Shawarma," he said, and Maggie followed his gesture to the table piled with steaming white takeout boxes.

"That's too much for six people, super soldiers or not," she reflected.

Tony cocked his head. "I suppose it is."

* * *

Over the next half hour, people slowly trickled into the common room in ones and twos. Vision and Wanda arrived together and came to chat to Maggie, and as she spoke to them she dimly noticed others wander in: Dr Banner, Sam, Natasha (Peter, Scott, Hope, and Clint had all headed home). As they arrived each person looked around warily, before piling some food onto a plate and finding a place amongst the various couches and seats around the room.

Maggie didn't think much of it until she walked into the kitchen to get a drink and then came back in to the room. She finally saw them all, the Avengers, sprawled around the room as they ate and teased each other and laughed. Dr Banner was in the middle of the story of his years on Sakaar and the downfall of Asgard. Bucky was serving salad for Pepper (Tony watched very, very closely). Natasha listened to Banner silently, something evaluating in her face, and as Maggie watched Steve caught Natasha's eye and cocked his head in a silent question. Natasha smiled – which could mean anything – and went back to listening to the story. Steve turned to clink beer bottles with Rhodey. Tony kept interrupting Bruce's story with snarky quips, so Rhodey shoved a shawarma wrap at him to shut him up. Vision poked curiously at Wanda's food, and Sam tried to convince Wanda to try the spicy sauce.

As Maggie took them all in, this picture of very _human _heroes, a grin spread across her face. Tony looked up and saw her in the doorway to the kitchen.

"Maggot," he said through a mouthful of shawarma, "Come and explain to Bruce why it was stupid for anyone to put armor on _the Hulk_–"

She shook her head at him as she carried her drink back to her seat. "Shhh and listen to the story, Tony."

Banner nodded his head in thanks and got back to telling them about the Hulk's duel with Thor. Maggie sat down next to Bucky, her knee touching his, and let the voices wash over her. Still in a conversation with Pepper, Bucky pressed his knee against Maggie's in a silent promise: _I'm here._

She put a hand to her chest, over her pounding heart, and smiled to herself as she looked around.

_It's a start._

* * *

**A/N: Hi I am also going to ignore Ross and the Accords Committee because Endgame will probably deal with that and I probably will in the main story so I ain't got time for that here. Let's just say the Avengers negotiated themselves a good deal and no one is a fugitive any more.**

**You will notice that I didn't show Tony and Steve's 'start' at a reconciliation – again because I think Endgame will deal with that.**

**Also – I've got a whole bunch of one shots coming, but I am accepting requests! Got something you think Maggie's been missing out on? A character interaction you'd like to see? It doesn't strictly have to involve Maggie. I know basically everyone was in this chapter but if I'd stopped to have Maggie chat with everyone this would've been hella long. More interactions to come!**

* * *

**Reviews**

**Guest: you're welcome haha. I'm glad it made you happy! I hope you enjoyed this second part as well :)**

**Red Vixen: Hello! I'm glad you're happy that this AU has started, I can't wait to show you more. Captain Marvel was fantastic, I loved it so much! Carol is a straight up snarky badass and I love her. Marvel is making a Black Widow movie! There's rumours that Emma Watson will be in it alongside ScarJo. Goose is indeed wonderful, and Samuel L Jackson was amazing. Love!**

**Nobody important: I'm glad you're excited! Here's more scream-fodder for you :)**


	3. One Day

**One Day**

**A/N: Sheer, unadulterated fluff. Enjoy.**

* * *

Maggie hadn't seen Bucky in two days.

This should be nothing, a blip in time compared to the months they'd spent apart since Siberia, but she'd just got him back and now he was _gone._

Well okay, she was maybe being a little overdramatic. He was in Brooklyn. After the initial rush of moving back to the Avengers Facility, Bucky and Steve had returned to their old stomping ground together for the first time in eighty years. Maggie had encouraged Bucky to go: _it's just a few days, and you two need this. You and me… we've got the rest of our lives._ So he'd held her close and then went off to Brooklyn with Steve.

And with them gone, the facility… was still bursting at the seams with Avengers. Maggie liked them all well enough, but after getting used to living with only four other people it was overwhelming. And everyone kept having dramatic conversations in corridors and the common room, so she could hardly get a morning coffee without stumbling across an argument that devolved into tearful apologies. Yesterday she'd heard far too much of Natasha and Dr Banner's weird and bumbling 'let's just be friends' conversation for her own comfort, so she'd taken one of Tony's cars and driven to the mansion in Manhattan.

* * *

Brooklyn

Bucky knew she'd be old, but… the cloud of white hair and the graying eyes before him lodged themselves painfully somewhere next to his heart. He didn't let it show in his face.

For a long moment Shirley Kemp didn't seem to process who stood on the doorstep of her little Brooklyn apartment. But then Bucky saw recognition – and realization – flood her face, and she stumbled out and into his arms.

She felt so fragile with her delicate bones and papery skin, but she gripped him with surprising strength when he wrapped his arms around her. She was shaking.

"_Bucky_," his little sister sobbed. He squeezed his eyes shut, and felt Steve's hand settle on his shoulder. The last time he'd seen his sister she'd been twelve years old, all gangly limbs and chattering mouth. She'd buried her face in her older sister's shoulder (Rebecca, from memory) when he left. Now, she buried her face in his half flesh, half metal shoulder and wept.

"I'm here," he croaked, his flesh hand rubbing her back. "I'm here."

"Bucky," she cried. "Bucky."

* * *

Maggie rattled around the empty house like a pinball, opening and closing books in the library at random, trying her hand at cooking (still got it), watching Netflix, rearranging her bedroom.

Her whole life stretched ahead of her, but alone… she couldn't sit still.

* * *

Mid morning on her second day in the mansion, Maggie was sliding down the polished banisters of the staircase like she always longed to do as a child, when the doorbell rang.

She landed soft-footed on the marble floor. Once upon a time she would have waited patiently for Mr Jarvis to hasten to the door and swing it open. But there was no more Mr Jarvis, just Maggie. So she padded toward the entryway, peeked through the side window, and then flung the door open.

For what felt like years she and Bucky just stood on either side of the doorway, staring at each other.

He looked good. He wore boots, jeans, a long-sleeved blue shirt and gloves, despite the warmer weather. His brown hair was half up in a bun, and his new beard framed his jawline. There was so much weight in that sea-grey gaze.

He looked unafraid, like he inhabited his own skin. Maggie's eyes dragged down and then up, taking in the way he filled out his clothes and stood with his hands in his pockets as if he was any normal man standing on any normal woman's doorstep. She had no idea what her face showed him, but her heart was pounding against her ribs and he'd always been able to read her better than anyone else.

When her eyes met his again, he made a show of leaning to the side and peering over her shoulder. His eyes flicked across the ornate foyer behind her.

"Nice house."

"It'd be nicer with you in it."

He raised an eyebrow and smirked at the line, but there was an undercurrent of earnest truth beneath the words that detracted from the joke Maggie had meant it to be.

She held out her hand. Bucky's eyes softened. After a moment of stillness he reached out to take her hand, and let her lead him in to her home.

* * *

Three days later, Maggie roused to the smell of bacon.

"Mmf."

Maggie's bedroom in the mansion used to be one of the guest rooms, which she'd made her own by filling it with color and light. Sunshine streamed through the gauzy drapes, illuminating the dark wooden wardrobe covered in odd ornaments and keepsakes, the vintage prints on the walls, the little pot plants she tried to keep alive, and the large, unmade bed. Three different rugs overlapped across the floor. None of Tony's swanky California minimalism for her, thanks.

Lying on her front with her face smashed into a pillow, Maggie groggily patted the bed to her left. Her fingers brushed against nothing but warm sheets.

With much grumbling she rolled out of bed and padded out of her room, her eyes squinted against the morning light. She followed the smell of bacon into the kitchen and stopped dead at what she saw.

Bucky stood with his back to her, engrossed in the pots and pans on the stovetop in front of him. At a glance Maggie saw eggs and bacon, and… was that a waffle maker? _Where did he even find that? _He wore tracksuit pants, but had draped one of her bedsheets around his shoulders like a toga instead of bothering with a shirt. He'd pulled his hair into a high ponytail, and the ends of his hair brushed the tops of his ears. Maggie stared at the line of his shoulders under the white sheet, at his look of concentration as he fried eggs, at the way his metal arm gleamed gold in the light.

She must have made some kind of noise, because he looked over his shoulder and his eyes widened.

"No!" he exclaimed as he waved a spatula at her. "This is meant to be breakfast in bed, it can't be breakfast in bed if you're not _in _bed."

Her eyebrows flew up and she smirked at him. "You want me to go back to bed and pretend to be asleep?"

His eyes had been tracking over her bare shoulders and her sleep-mussed hair, but at the question he blinked. "Yes, that would be good. Thank you." She rolled her eyes and turned, but paused when he called: "wait! Where do you keep the plates in this spaceship?"

"Can't hear you, I'm busy sleeping!" she called back. She rolled back into bed laughing at the sound of his growl and the opening and closing of cupboards.

She did end up napping for a few more minutes until Bucky arrived with a tray piled with bacon, eggs, waffles, slightly burned toast, and coffee. They sat in the middle of her large bed and wolfed down the food, only pausing to tease each other and trade jokes. It was such a relief to just have the two of them – they still hadn't worked out how to _be _around other people, hadn't worked out how much eye contact or affection or comforting touches were allowed in the presence of others. It had always just been the two of them. Maggie wanted Bucky to be a part of her life and wanted to be a part of Bucky's life, but it was tricky mixing the two. For now, the two of them alone in a mansion was pretty good. To get to know one another again.

Two super-soldiers could put away a lot of breakfast food.

When she'd polished off the last of the scrambled eggs, Maggie flopped backward and put her hands on her stomach. "Thank you, Bucky. You didn't have to do that."

He cleared the dishes and flopped down beside her, making the whole mattress bounce. "Would've been better if you hadn't woken up and foiled my plans," he grumbled.

"But I wouldn't have seen you wearing a bedsheet as an apron if I hadn't," she replied, tugging on the sheet twisted around his torso. He grinned wide and bright, and Maggie's breath hitched at the sight of it as if she hadn't known him for years.

She took a moment to just _look _at him – motes of dust shone in the sunlight slanting between them, and in the light she could count each one of his dark eyelashes. Her eyes roved across his face, across the laugh lines in his forehead and around his eyes, the course lines of his beard, and then down to the strands of his dark hair laid across the pillow crunched up under his face.

Bucky's eyes were on her. In the empty space between them, Maggie let her fingers tangle with his – the flesh ones. His hand was warm and surprisingly soft – but that's super soldier serum for you, you don't get calluses. She slid her thumb across the back of his hand, her gaze still hungrily taking him in.

"You're thinking something," he murmured, then blinked. "Well, you're always thinking something, but this… seems specific."

Her hand tightened on his. "I'm thinking… I've been missing you so long, now that I have you I'm not quite sure what to do with you."

His thoughtful look turned into a slow smirk. "I can think of a few things."

She laughed and released his hand to punch his bare chest, only laughing harder at the feigned look of hurt he shot her. She rolled over so she could reach her coffee on the bedside table.

"Meg…"

She looked over her shoulder and saw that Bucky had reached into the space between them so his fingers were inches from brushing the skin of her shoulder.

"What?"

His fingers drifted to her shoulder, where her nanotech tattoo peeked above the line of her singlet. He'd seen the tattoo before – they had been sharing a bed for three days, after all – but this was the first time he'd brought attention to it. He ran his thumb along the dark line stretching around her left shoulder.

"These are your wings, aren't they?" His voice was low, fascinated, and combined with the sensation of his finger brushing her bare skin she shivered.

She nodded. "You want to see?"

Silent agreement glimmered in his eyes, so she scooted forward to get some space and then pulled off her singlet. Bucky propped himself on one shoulder and his eyes tracked over her bare back, with its large black _X _and new wing moorings. The dark lines stretched across her pale skin, moving with each minute twitch of her muscles.

Maggie gave him a few seconds to take it in, and once his eyes had tracked back up to her turned head she activated her wings. She watched Bucky watch the intelligent metal slide across her skin and then bloom out, unfurling delicate and impenetrable into the air above the bed. Maggie had done this so many times it felt like second nature, so she didn't look away from Bucky's face: his eyes widened and then darkened, fixated on the incredible feat of engineering taking place before him.

When the large, gunmetal grey wings were fully formed they arced across the bedroom, seeming to absorb all the sunlight in their sleek bones and scaled webbing.

Bucky reached out, and then hesitated. His eyes flicked up to Maggie.

She smiled. "Go ahead."

He started below her wings. Maggie jumped when his thumb pressed against her metal-reinforced spine, but then shook her head at him when he looked up with concerned eyes. She hadn't been touched like this in a long time. He ran his thumb up the knobs of her spine, until the pad of his forefinger hit the point where her flesh became metal. Slowly, almost in awe, his fingers traced her wing mooring and then flowed up, along the rigid metal bone that arced into the air. Then he ran his hand down one stretch of scaled webbing. Maggie shivered – she felt every pressure shift and change of direction, as if he were stroking her skin. His hand felt so warm against the metal.

Bucky had to swing his legs off the bed to reach the far tip of her right wing, his fingers finding the sharp metal point. Maggie flicked the end of her wing a little, just to startle him, and he cast a wry glance back at her.

She folded her wings in against her shoulder blades and Bucky followed them back, ending up back between both wings. He pressed a kiss against her spine.

"Beautiful," he murmured.

Maggie looked over her shoulder and smiled at him. "I know." He grinned, wide and white, and she turned to hold his face between her hands. His hands settled on her waist. Maggie's skin and metal wings tingled where he'd touched her, and in retaliation she combed her hand through his hair, because she knew how much he liked it. Sure enough, his eyes closed and he leaned into the touch. "So are you," she murmured.

He opened his eyes and gave her a lazy smile. "D'you remember that day in the safehouse in… Townsville, I think it was. When you had a loose connection in one of your wing moorings?"

Maggie groane and pulled back to cover her face. "Don't remind me. I was such an idiot, I was so worried about how I'd react if you touched me that I tried to fix it myself, and when you _did _touch me I could barely get two brain cells together long enough to form words."

Bucky had opened his mouth to speak, but when he registered her words he froze mid-word and mid-action, and blinked for three long seconds.

"What?"

"I…" his mouth opened and closed. "I thought you were _afraid._"

She laughed. "Of you?"

"Of… of your back being touched. I know… your nightmares."

Maggie's laughter faded a little, but the flabbergasted look on his face was too amusing not to smile. "That's true, and I still have nightmares about that sometimes, yes. But I wasn't thinking about _that _while you were touching my back."

Bucky blinked again, and she watched him reassess his entire memory of that day. "I was going to tell you about how distracted _I _was while fixing you up, and now you're saying you were too!" He blinked once more. "I felt _terrible _when you shivered, but if you're telling me you weren't scared…" Slowly, his expression changed.

Maggie laughed again and punched his shoulder. "Stop looking so pleased with yourself!"

He grinned. "I can't help it if my animal magnetism–" he didn't get much further than that, because she threw a pillow at him.

He retaliated and they wrestled until they fell off the bed with a _thunk_. Maggie recovered first, laughing breathlessly as she shuffled her wings, and leaned back against the side of the bed.

"We had some good times, didn't we?" she said.

"I'll say," Bucky replied from the ground. He didn't seem inclined to move from his sprawled position. "I never thought I'd have so much fun while on the run. Dancing, sightseeing, books… the company was alright, too, I suppose."

She wedged her toe into his side and he grunted. "I missed that, these past months," she said. He fell still and peered up at her through his hair. "I missed you. Being with you." She cut herself off when her voice hitched, and hoped that the earnest look in her eyes told him everything she meant to say: _I missed lazy days in our safehouse and holding your hand in a busy market and lights on the snow and knowing where you are even if I can't see you. _

He'd always been able to read her eyes. His metal hand rested on her foot, surprisingly gentle.

"I know, doll. So did I." His metal thumb ran across the ball of her foot, over the metal plate that her heel spurs emerged from. "But we don't have to miss each other any more."

* * *

For the next few hours they talked about what they'd been up to during their separation. They already knew the basics, but this was so different from their Kimoyo beads – the words flowed freely, and Maggie could let her mouth run and use gestures, and Bucky ended up laughing at the expressions on her face as she described her run ins with the Accords Committee, and the justice system, and the various bad guys she'd fought. He told her she'd give him a heart attack one of these days.

As they spoke they got dressed, and Maggie finally gave Bucky a tour of the house – even her preserved, dusty childhood bedroom. Bucky teased her about being rich, and she teased him about being old. They ended up sparring in the private courtyard. They'd never sparred before, not even to test their abilities. Before, it would have been too dangerous. Too visible and noisy, with too much risk of one or both of them having a flashback. But with just the two of them in the light-filled courtyard, years and miles away from their various traumas, it was _fun. _They ended up in a sweaty laughing mess on the pavestones.

* * *

In the afternoon they finally emerged from the mansion and took the subway in to Coney Island. They wore civilian clothes so as not to stand out too much, and it felt oddly freeing for Maggie and Bucky to stand in a subway car with dozens of other indifferent New Yorkers, like any other normal couple.

Maggie found that many places and experiences never quite lived up to her expectations – it was a fact of life, she'd realized, and learned not to be disappointed by it.

But Coney Island with Bucky was everything she'd hoped it would be.

They went to Luna Park and the Aquarium, clutching each other and laughing on the roller coaster, playing for prizes in the arcade like they had years ago on Maggie's birthday. They made their fingers sticky with cotton candy. Maggie liked the fast-paced rides, the ones that got her blood pumping, but Bucky liked the ones he remembered (he told her all about Steve's encounter with the Cyclone), and the arcade games. They mostly went unrecognized, save for a few people who looked twice at Maggie's face or at Bucky's arm when his shirt sleeve rode up.

Maggie and Bucky moved in and out of each other's orbit, their arms linked or their hands clasped as they went from ride to ride, their voices rising and falling as they teased, laughed, remembered.

"Hey," Maggie said as they walked through a glass tunnel in the aquarium, peering up at the glinting fish. Bucky looked away from a stingray lying flat on the top of the tube, and she squeezed his hand. "I want to date you."

"I don't want to alarm you doll, but I think we might be on a date." He gestured to their clasped hands and their surroundings.

"I know _that_. But… you and me, we never really got the chance to date properly."

His eyebrow rose. "Properly?"

She groaned and tipped her head back. "I'm saying this wrong. I just mean… I _loved _the time we spent together, but we were on the run and frankly pretty messed up in the head. I want to be able to go to the cinema with you without being worried about being caught on CCTV. You know what I mean?"

He thought about it as they continued to stroll down the tube. "Yeah, I know what you mean. I want that too." Then he scratched the back of his neck. "Dating might've changed some since 1943, though."

"I think it has. You're allowed to sleep with each other now!"

He smirked. "Ah yes, because sex was invented in the 1960s."

Maggie elbowed him and he dodged away, laughing at her. A few moments later they paused to watch a shoal of silver and neon blue fish, and Bucky's hand found its way into Maggie's.

"So, dating," he murmured. She shuffled a bit closer so her right arm was pressed against his left. "Play it by ear?"

She nodded, and then grinned at him. "We've got all the time in the world to figure it out."

His smile was brilliant in the shifting blue light of the tunnel. "I can't wait."

* * *

Around sunset they got hungry while walking along the Coney Island boardwalk, and waded through the late afternoon crowds towards a hot dog stand. As the vendor wrapped the hot dogs in napkins and went to hand them over, he looked up from under his cap and blinked first at Maggie's face, hidden behind sunglasses, and then at Bucky's.

"Hey," he said as Bucky took the hot dogs out of his frozen hands. "Aren't you…"

They just watched him silently. Bucky bit into his hot dog. Maggie juggled the change and her hot dog, keeping half an eye on the hot dog vendor to make sure he wasn't going to freak out. They hadn't been stopped all day since the civvies and sunglasses had so far served as a decent disguise.

The vendor stared for a second longer, then shook his head and offered a smile. "Sorry, sorry. You won't want to be bothered."

"It's alright," Maggie said. She felt generous after a day full of everything she'd wanted. "Good spotting."

The vendor smiled, then turned to Bucky. His face suddenly became serious and he straightened. "Welcome home, sir."

Bucky froze. Maggie froze for half a second as well, but then she looked from the vendor's earnest expression to Bucky's poleaxed face, and something inside her grew wings. A grin broke out across her face.

"Only took him eighty years," she said softly.

Bucky blinked, then looked from her brilliant grin and back to the now flustered hot dog vendor. He actually stuttered, clutching his hot dog in a death grip, as he said: "Th-thank you."

The vendor nodded once. "Hey, you're welcome. Have a good day you two."

Maggie tucked her arm around Bucky's. "We will."

She let Bucky think in silence as they wandered away down the boardwalk, keeping her eyes on the gold and pink ocean as she enjoyed her hot dog. Seagulls cried out along the beach.

After a few minutes she squeezed his arm. "You okay, handsome?"

His face was thoughtful. "I guess it didn't really hit me… until now. That I'm back. Is that stupid?"

"I don't think so. It's the little things."

Bucky smiled at her, then took a deep breath of the salty sea air and a bite of his squashed hot dog. He had mustard on his nose when he turned to look her in the eyes again. "It sure is."

* * *

When they returned to the Facility the next day it was a relief. They'd missed their family, though when they walked into an argument between nearly every Avenger about what counted as a breakfast food ("Any meat aside from sausage or bacon is _illegal_!" Rhodey protested to a mutinous-looking Natasha) they found they didn't miss them quite as much as they had five minutes previously.

It was still strange to be themselves, together, around other people, but Maggie found it easier to reach up and squeeze Bucky's shoulder as she slipped past him without feeling like her hand would spontaneously combust. Tony was weird and squirrely, avoiding looking at Bucky at all, but when Maggie told him that a single green smoothie didn't count as breakfast he launched into an impassioned defense of his eating habits and nutritional calculations.

As they all trooped into the kitchen so Sam could show them what the hell a 'froot loop pancake' was, Vision appeared beside Maggie and offered her a smile.

"Did you have a good time?" he asked softly.

"Yeah," she replied, and touched the disused and useless Kimoyo bead around her neck. She looked up and spotted Bucky on the other side of the kitchen, arguing loudly with Natasha in Russian. She grinned. "Yeah, we did."

* * *

**A/N: The next one shot is named after a Beyonce song. I am now taking guesses as to which one.**

* * *

**Reviews**

**ebarnea25: Yay! Hope you loved this one too :)**

**Red Vixen: I wish that too! And don't you worry – what you asked for? It's coming ;) A little ways away, but it's definitely coming. I hope you enjoyed this one shot!**

**Guest: Ohhhh my god you pretty much perfectly predicted an upcoming one shot I have planned. Can't wait to write it and show you!**


	4. Formation

**Formation**

**A/N: Surprise early update because it was my birthday over the weekend!  
****I'm stealing an idea from another writer - as a small birthday gift, it would be awesome if you could tell me your favorite moment in the Wyvern and why **❤

**CW: Brief mention of animal abuse**

* * *

It had been four weeks.

Four weeks of startling peace in which the bad guys of the world had apparently decided to take a breather, and the Avengers healed old wounds and learned to live with one another.

Maggie still got jumpy in crowds of people so the sudden influx of new residents was an adjustment, but it helped that she more or less liked all of them. They all seemed to know each other quite well, so it was up to her and Bucky to get to know those they hadn't met yet. Dr Banner, Wanda, Natasha, and even Sam and Steve were still relative strangers to Maggie. Natasha was so far proving the toughest to get to know, but Tony assured her that was normal.

One morning Maggie and Bucky sat on stools at the common area kitchen counter, nursing coffees. They were alone in the kitchen as it was about 0500 (nightmares, what can you do), placing bets on which Avenger they thought would be the first to walk in. Bucky's money was on Steve ("the punk goes for a run at 6 every morning, of course he'll be in first"), but Maggie had an ace up her sleeve – just the other day Dr Banner had confided in her that he liked to come in and eat breakfast before the rest of the Avengers, because things got hectic in the common room kitchen around breakfast time and a hungry Bruce Banner could very easily turn into a hungry Hulk.

But neither Steve nor Dr Banner came into the kitchen. Instead, just before 0600 the Avengers alert blared across the Facility. Bucky, unused to the flashing lights and booming alarm, was out of his seat and clutching a knife before Maggie managed to talk him down.

"It's just the mission alert!" she told him, one hand held up in the _stand down _signal. Bucky's eyes darted. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., kill the alarm in the kitchen." Once the sound cut out and the lights stopped flashing, Maggie ran a hand through her hair. "The… the analysts are still on duty, they must have flagged something."

Bucky's heaving chest started to slow. "A… mission alert?" He didn't put his knife away.

"_Crap_," Maggie hissed. "We never decided what everyone would do when this happened."

She met Bucky's eyes. In these past weeks of awkward getting-to-know-you conversations and breakfast routines she'd almost forgotten that she and her new neighbors were the most elite crime-fighting group in the world.

Bucky's gaze steadied. "What did you usually do when that alarm went off?"

She straightened, and took a breath. "Assemble."

* * *

Maggie's wings and uniform were stored in her moorings and in the bracelets she always wore, but Bucky needed gear. So they made a beeline for the Avengers hangar, which also housed the armory. And it seemed that everyone else had the same idea.

Without being told to, the Avengers had assembled. Natasha was already in the armory when they arrived, and tipped her head toward the case that held Bucky's uniform.

"Wanda's in changeroom 1," she murmured. "Barnes, you can use number 2."

Maggie slipped into the hangar itself to see Vision, Rhodey, and Dr Banner standing by the dormant Quinjet.

"Any idea of the situation?" she called, activating her bracelets so her red and black uniform slid out over her pajamas.

"There is an incident unfolding in Mexico," Vision replied. "Mr Stark and Captain Rogers are liaising with the analysts now."

"Okay," she breathed, and turned to Dr Banner. The man looked sleep-rumpled in sweatpants and a soft purple shirt. "Are you sure you want to come along, doctor?"

"I'm–" he broke off when the hangar door burst open to admit Sam, who took one bleary-eyed look at the group by the Quinjet and then ran into the armory. Banner continued: "I'm coming. We never really talked about what we'd do in these situations but I… I think I can help."

"I agree," she replied. "As Bruce Banner or as the Hulk, you can help. I'd say we'd be lucky to have either."

He gave her a small smile and ducked his head. Maggie decided to burn off her rising tension with a few stretches, and they waited for the rest of the Avengers to arrive.

* * *

Two minutes later everyone save for Steve and Tony stood around the waiting Quinjet, dressed in their uniforms (besides Banner). Romanoff had powered up the Quinjet, and the sound of its engines filled the hangar.

No one spoke. They'd all gathered here prepared for battle but no one acknowledged it – as if merely by speaking about the possibility, this semblance of a team would fall apart.

Maggie's heart was pounding. _What if this is it_, she wondered, her eyes darting from Avenger to Avenger. Bucky stood loose-limbed in his blue and brown uniform with his gun strapped across his back, but his eyes were wary. Maggie's gaze swept from him and across the others. _What if this is what breaks us apart?_

At that moment the hangar door opened once more and Tony and Steve jogged in. Steve was in full Cap gear, and Tony wore a faded band t-shirt and sweatpants (though Maggie knew that in seconds the arc reactor could generate the Iron Man armor).

"We heading out?" called Sam, his arms crossed over his chest.

"We sure are, flyboy," Tony replied once they were close enough.

Steve nodded. "Let's get on the Quinjet," he instructed. "We'll plan once we're on the move."

* * *

They fit pretty well in the Quinjet together, with Rhodey and Natasha in the cockpit and the rest strapped into seats or standing in the main cabin. Maggie stood toward the back, her arms folded across her chest and her eyes sharp as she watched Steve and Tony.

They stood a few feet apart, seemingly focused but with small moments of hesitation: when Tony accepted the holo-call from Agent Asfour, Steve snapped his mouth closed as if he'd been about to say something. And when Steve reached for the holographic projection of Asfour's face and expanded it so all the Avengers in the Quinjet could see, Tony snatched his hand back as if he'd been stung.

Maggie's stomach flipped over.

"Morning, Avengers," Agent Asfour said, then plowed on without waiting for their replies. "Our analysts have flagged an unfolding situation in Mexico – there's a group attacking Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City, law enforcement are on the scene but there's special circumstances which the Avengers are uniquely qualified to handle."

"Special circumstances?" queried Natasha from the cockpit.

"Weirdness," Asfour deadpanned. "We've had our eye on this group for a while. They call themselves the 'Itinerant Court', based on a migrating form of government that existed in Western Europe during the middle ages – this group's leaders claim that their ancestors were ancient rulers of Spain and France." She paused for a beat. "They're essentially a cult. Their goal is to recreate what they see as the golden years of the medieval period. They're from Arizona, but last month they relocated to Mexico. The move alarmed us, because much of their preachings talk about 'reclaiming' land that belongs to them–"

"They do know they're not in Western Europe, right?" interrupted Sam.

Asfour sighed. "I'm not saying it makes sense. They're a mess, but a dangerous mess. We've had trouble keeping an eye on them because they're notoriously secretive, but we _do _know that they've been training, and that they've been making weapons. And now they're attacking the heart of Mexico City and holding their own."

"Weapons?" asked Dr Banner.

"They're obsessed with blending medieval technology with modern tech – one of their leaders is a notable scientist, he had his research funding cut due to his extremist views. Intel on the ground suggests they're using medieval weaponry such as war hammers, maces, clubs, spears – and law enforcement is reporting _ten _trebuchets – but the weapons are enhanced somehow, we're seeing signs of long range electroshock weaponry, electrolasers, piezo-electric projectiles, energy dispersal devices–" Asfour went down her list of reported weaponry on scene, and Maggie watched the Avengers in the Quinjet trade confused glances.

She had just opened her mouth to maybe offer an explanation when Tony clapped his hands and said: "I think we've got it from here Asfour, talk soon love you bye!" and hung up on her.

Silence filled the Quinjet. Wanda rubbed sleep out of her eyes.

Sam put up his hand. "Okay, I didn't understand most of that."

Everyone looked to Steve and Tony, side-by side at the front of the jet. They looked at each other.

For a moment it looked like it would fall apart – no one really understood yet what they were about to do, no one had yet voiced the question '_so are we a team?', a_nd no one, apparently, had taken on the mantel of 'leader'.

But then Steve gestured to Tony. "Okay, tech. That's your area."

Tony nodded once, then spread his hands and started to explain.

He didn't start out strong. He began with "Basically their whole shtick is Renaissance Fair meets cyberpunk," and at least 50% of the Quinjet inhabitants stared at him as if he were speaking in tongues. Then he remembered his audience, and started to _properly _explain: he described the medieval war machines at play, and how the Itinerant Court had tricked out the weapons – electrical currents, energy pulses – to make them deadlier. He explained the danger that each weapon posed, what to be careful for, and how to destroy them.

"Okay," Rhodey said, scratching his head as he looked at the holographic map of Mexico City. Chapultepec Castle was a glowing red dot to the west of the city centre, and the Itinerant Court soldiers (because they were a small army, some hundreds of members) appeared on the map as a yellow mass spreading inward. "But what does that look like? How do we" –he gestured to the ten people in the Quinjet– "fight that?"

After another silent, awkward moment, Tony smirked and gestured to Steve. "Battle tactics. That's your area."

Steve _smiled. _He'd been so serious and silent since he'd first shown up that morning that the smile made Maggie's eyes widen. But after that brief smile, as if to say _I see what you're doing_, the grim mask fell over his face again and he turned back to the team. "Well we know what the Itinerant Court want – they want Chapultepec Castle as a base for them to expand their 'empire' from. It's the only royal castle in all of South and North America so it's got symbolic meaning to them. Tactically" – he zoomed in on the holographic map – "the castle itself is in a very defensible position. They haven't taken it yet, but if they do we'll have a much harder time shaking them loose. So the plan is to defend the castle, while also taking out their war machines and rounding up their members for law enforcement to deal with." He glanced sideways at Tony, just for a second, and some kind of mutual understanding passed between them. Maggie cocked her head.

Steve cleared his throat. "We do have surprise on our side – no one's really expecting the Avengers at this point." He left the '_everyone thinks we've broken up or died' _unsaid. But the sentiment was clearly felt throughout the Quinjet, if the shuffled feet and awkward glances were anything to go by.

Then Tony said: "We've got a good old-fashioned Game of Thrones pitched battle on our hands," with the kind of glee he normally reserved for Christmas or explosions, and the tension broke.

Steve smiled again, if a little resignedly, and then laid out their plan. He started by outlining their defense of the castle, including cooperation with the staff and tourists still trapped inside (it was a museum now), and then spread to the outlying areas.

As he detailed strategy and handed out assignments, Tony chimed in. When new intel came in that the Itinerant Court were running three of their trebuchets with a computer program that targeted clusters of human body heat, Steve frowned and then said: "Okay, Vision–"

But Tony cut in with: "Vision needs to be on the other trebuchets, and Maggie'll actually be better at cracking that program. You could replace her with–"

"– Sam, right," Steve agreed, already nodding. "And who do you think for manning the entrance gates, here?"

Tony blinked once at being asked, then scratched his chin. "To be honest the civilians are going to be an issue there, but–" he turned, his focus zeroing in on Dr Banner (who had been quietly watching from his seat at the edge of the cabin). "Bruce, buddy, how are things with your green bedfellow?"

Bruce looked up owlishly. "Um… good, he's got a moral compass now… I think. But I'd still prefer not to work with civilians."

"Fair enough," Tony said. "Then probably Wanda for that area, she can keep an eye out for civilians and has the battering power to keep back the knights of the round table."

"Right, good call," Steve said, and continued handing out assignments. "Buck, you speak Spanish now right?"

Bucky nodded.

"I'm going to put you on the ground with law enforcement and armed forces – you can coordinate with them, go for the ground forces and make sure they don't surround the castle."

"He's not the only Spanish speaker," Tony piped up. Maggie stiffened. "There's like, at least five of us." He gestured to himself, Maggie, Vision, and Natasha.

Steve nodded once to acknowledge the point, then replied: "Bucky knows how to lead soldiers, and his skillset is better for ground-based close-range fighting." And then he waited. He didn't say '_I've made the decision'_, or '_stop arguing, Tony'. _He just waited.

Maggie didn't realize that she'd been holding her breath until Tony tipped his head to the side and said "yeah, alright". She sucked in a sharp, quiet breath, and met Bucky's eyes. He had the audacity to _wink _at her. She scowled at him. Was she the only one who saw the fragile threads holding this whole thing together?

When Steve and Tony finished handing out assignments they were two minutes out from Mexico City. Steve turned away to speak to F.R.I.D.A.Y. about coordinating medical assistance on the ground, and Maggie sidled up beside Tony.

"Aww, you're co-parenting."

He punched her.

"Seriously though, it's good to see." She squeezed his arm and his scowl softened. "You're a good leader, Tony, and I'm glad he sees that."

Tony shrugged. "We've got different skills that work together. Like he, for example, has the skill of throwing himself headfirst into trouble without a second thought and somehow surviving. I, on the other hand, am very good at second thoughts."

Steve looked over his shoulder with narrowed eyes, as if he could sense what Tony was talking about.

"One minute," called Natasha from the pilot's seat. "Get ready for contact!"

Tony touched the arc reactor in his chest, and Maggie watched Iron Man materialize beside her. Around them, Avengers checked weapons and tightened uniforms. The plan was for Natasha to fly the Quinjet over the castle and they'd all jump out – the fliers outnumbered the non-fliers these days, so only Steve, Bucky, and Dr Banner needed a lift. Maggie was going to fly Dr Banner down to the automated trebuchets and get his help with those, and then he planned to Hulk out and defend the steep hillsides around the castle.

"Ready doctor?" she asked as Banner approached with his head ducked and his shoulders hunched, as if he was in the way.

He rubbed his hands together. "Last time I jumped out of a flying vehicle went terribly, so this can only be an improvement." He cleared his throat. "And I think at this point, you can call me Bruce."

She grinned. "Bruce. Call me Maggie."

"Maggie."

She beamed at him once more, then looked over her shoulder to find Bucky amongst the bustling Avengers. He was going to get a lift from Vision so the two of them were having a very efficient conversation about where he ought to be dropped, and at what velocity to cause maximum damage. But, sensing her gaze, Bucky looked over and their eyes met.

It was just a second, but it was enough. To acknowledge that they were going into battle once more by each other's sides. To wish each other luck, and to remind each other to be careful. To say _I love you. _Maybe even _you are my mission. _

And then they looked away.

Maggie's gaze next slid to Tony, and she grinned. "Let's throw ourselves headfirst into trouble."

His faceplate slid down with a _clink. _"Sounds fun."

* * *

Maggie had more or less gotten used to fighting with Tony, Rhodey, and Vision. But this was a completely different animal.

They all dove out the back of the Quinjet, and in the back of Maggie's mind a voice whispered _oh, it's on. _They were a colorful, streamlined collection of dangerous-looking people, and they streaked through the sky with glowing repulsors, scarlet magic, and flared metal wings. The sight reminded Maggie of a meteor shower.

Mexico City was an incredible sprawl of houses and streets below them, the city clinging to the curvature of hills and mountains for miles around. A low layer of smog hung over the city to the east, and to the west Maggie could already see the signs of battle: smoke plumes, the distant black specks of running people, electric blue flashes of the Itinerant Court's weapons. The battle itself was centered around what looked like an oasis amidst the dense city – a wide forested area with a prominent hill on which sat Chapultepec Castle, which even from this distance was clearly a grand, pale stone structure.

And then… it was weird. The Avengers didn't speak, they just flew to their assigned tasks – Wanda, Sam, Rhodey, Steve, and Tony headed for the castle itself, while the others went to the castle extremities. Maggie soared down to her task, the three automated trebuchets, with her arms wrapped around Bruce's middle. He was tense, but thankfully didn't Hulk out.

On the road at the edge of the forest, Maggie and Bruce arrived at one of the trebuchets. It was a large steel structure that before their eyes shuddered and fired_, _the long arm snapping forward to fling a glowing ball of some kind of electrical energy. Maggie watched the projectile arc through the sky and then impact something out of sight in the forest. A plume of flames and smoke went up, and Maggie thought: _vehicle._

This trebuchet wasn't even guarded, so Maggie and Bruce got to work at its base, where a control panel accessed the targeting system.

As they worked Maggie kept half an ear on the comms system, but… nothing. She heard the occasional mutter of "over there" or "that one", but the Avengers weren't really _talking _to each other.

Maggie could tell that they were still very good and what they did – she heard distant explosions, gunfire, and electricity crackling, and the shouts of alarmed Itinerant Court soldiers (she decided to call them Courtiers, at least in her own head). But she felt isolated from the rest of the team, as if they were doing their jobs and she was doing hers, and they happened to be in the same area.

Combined, it took she and Bruce three minutes to crack the program for the three trebuchets on the road. Once they'd figured it out, Bruce took five big steps back and Hulked out.

Maggie allowed herself a moment of distraction because _damn_, up close that was some scary shit. Shuffling, mild-mannered Bruce just _expanded_, becoming a massive green behemoth with rippling muscles who roared so loud that the sound echoed off the nearby buildings and deafened Maggie from all sides.

Once he'd finished roaring, the Hulk turned on Maggie. Her every instinct screamed _threat, run_, but she stood her ground even though the effort made her legs shake. She met the Hulk's furious, beady eyes.

She swallowed and jabbed her thumb over her shoulder. "I'm gonna… finish this up."

The Hulk grunted. "Okay." He knocked one fist against the tarmac and huffed, as if he couldn't decide what to do next.

Her eyes widened. "I think you were going to, um…" she tipped her head toward the distant sounds of fighting. "Smash?"

He grinned at her, the way he bared his teeth almost feral. "Smash," he agreed. And then with just the bunching of his muscles as a warning he leaped, soaring over the trees and into the heart of the forest.

Maggie blew out a breath and turned back to the trebuchet control panel, her heart pounding. Seconds later, just as she was powering down the trebuchets and messing up their programming so they couldn't be restarted, she heard the Hulk roar again. Screams followed.

"Okay," she breathed, stepping back. "Okay."

For a moment she thought about calling into the comms to ask Steve and Tony where she should go next – she'd completed her assigned task, what else was on the list? But then she just stopped, and _listened. _She heard more intense fighting over the comms now; gunshots and electrical whines and grunts of pain. She tapped the side of her red goggles and brought up a holographic map of the area where the blue pins of the Avengers wove around the yellow masses of Courtiers.

The Avengers needed to get their act together. She took a few more seconds to read the situation, then flared her wings and leaped into the sky. "Falcon, Iron Man, I'm heading to your position. What do you need?"

Sam responded, irritation clear in his voice. "They've got aerial weapons – slings, catapults, I think I've seen a few tricked out arrows–"

"– Clint is going to be _offended_," Tony cut in gleefully.

"– but the ones firing them are holed up in some kind of sniper's nest southwest of the castle, and I can't get close," Sam continued. "Think you can help out?"

"Anything for you," Maggie replied, and spiraled down into the trees.

* * *

As if that short conversation had broken some kind of vow of silence, it all started to fall into place. One by one, Avengers spoke up about their positions and what they needed, calling out warnings and suggestions and insults.

As Maggie took out the sniper's nest (no one ever expected the airborne enemy to walk through the front door), Tony mused: "Battering rams? Someone took the renaissance fair way too hard."

After taking out the nest Maggie rocketed into the sky and fell into the aerial defense with the other fliers – mostly Sam and Tony at this point, circling the castle and picking off the approaching Courtier hordes. The Courtiers themselves wore some kind of lightweight chainmail that deflected blades and glancing bullets, and most of them wore helmets. As she dove on one group and had to abruptly rear up when the group swung their glowing spears up to point at her, Maggie had the bizarre feeling that she was in some kind of medieval fantasy reenactment – she the dragon swooping out of the sky, they the knights fending her off. _Well_, she thought, _it's not going to be a good day for the knights. _

At one point she and Sam nearly ran into each other as they went after one group armed with electrified maces. They swore and apologized to each other, but after that near miss they seemed to fall into sync; they gave each other enough room to maneuver but stayed close enough to provide backup, moving quick and lithe around each other in the air.

On the ground the Hulk got distracted by a burning pile of ammunition; confused by the exploding, sparking mess and enraged by the noise. But as Maggie watched, Bucky slipped out of the trees and shouted "_hey_!"

Hulk whirled around with his shoulders heaving, and Maggie's stomach plummeted hundreds of feet to the sharp trees below. She unconsciously angled her wings, ready to dive in and snatch Bucky out of harm. But Bucky just pointed at one of the trebuchets in the middle of the forest, which fired a cluster of electrified shrapnel that broke apart above the castle and rained down, sparking and exploding. The Mexican flag atop the castle caught fire.

"Smash that," Bucky barked at the growling Hulk, as if he wasn't feet away from those heavy green fists.

And the Hulk obeyed. He gnashed his teeth and leaped again, landing on the trebuchet itself and digging his fingers into the frame. With a roar he _pulled_, and the metal crumpled with a shriek.

"Nice one," Maggie called to Bucky as she swooped over his head.

"What can I say, I've got experience dealing with hot-headed idiots."

After a few seconds of silence, Steve's voice rang out over the comms: "_Hey_."

As Maggie gained height again Rhodey called: "Wanda, stop holding back! Kick their asses."

As if in reply an immense scarlet bloom of magic erupted from the castle entryway, and Maggie saw shapes wearing chain mail go flying.

After a few wobbly minutes, the Avengers brought it all together and they _clicked. _Maggie felt it – it wasn't just the comms connecting her to the others on her team. She knew where to fly and when they needed her, knew when to weave and when to fire, and knew what Sam intended when he said "They can see us coming a mile away, but if we stop thinking of the castle as a defensive point and instead as something to hide behind…" And Rhodey understood as well, apparently, because the three of them dove in unison and lost themselves behind the bulk of the castle, in the thick trees on the hillside, and then rocketed out above a group of unprepared Courtiers.

Maggie stopped worrying about who was where because she could sense it – partly from the readout on her HUD, partly from updates over the comms, and partly from instinct. She didn't dive east to head off a group of burly Courtiers wielding war hammers because she knew that Steve and Vision were waiting to ambush them around the corner. Instead she cut west and dogged the Hulk's trail of destruction, picking off the Courtiers who'd hidden from the raging green giant. Rhodey arrived just in time to help her take out a larger group of Courtiers with energy slings.

Natasha left the Quinjet on autopilot and asked for a lift, and Maggie was already there to scoop her out of the back of the jet and bring her down. She dropped her right in the middle of a knot of soldiers and watched the Black Widow work.

On the road leading up to the castle, Bucky and his band of law enforcement and armed forces called for air support and she dove in. They fought together for five intense minutes, as in sync as they ever were as the Wyvern and the Winter Soldier – ground and sky as one. They even did the thing they used to do where Bucky would retreat, drawing his enemies in to a group in front of him, then Maggie would swoop in and crash through them with the hard edges of her wings.

"D'you think these guys realize that people in the 'golden age' they're trying to recreate had an average life span of like thirty years?" Tony mused.

"D'you think they realize that _machine guns _don't count as medieval weapons?" responded a very annoyed Sam.

A trebuchet projectile crunched into one of the castle turrets and the structure wobbled. Tony rocketed towards it and caught the turret, using nanotech boosters to give him the extra thrust to keep the structure upright. He had barely gotten through calling Maggie's name before she was there, spraying specially-designed nanotech structural foam to reinforce the caved-in base. When the foam solidified and the turret was secure she and Tony went after the trebuchet.

It didn't last long. Tony brought out the literal big guns - his detached nanotech energy cannons - and blasted the trebuchet while Maggie swooped, formed the nanotech spike ball out of the end of her heel spurs and smashed the trebuchet to smithereens.

"How's _that _for a medieval weapon?" Tony crowed.

Soaring away from the obliterated trebuchet and over the fighting in the forest, Maggie caught a glint of metal out of the corner of her eye and turned just as Steve's shield came flying out of the canopy of trees, spinning wildly. She twisted, snatched the Vibranium disc out of the air, then tossed it down at a group of Courtiers in the forest below. It ricocheted and knocked down three of them before it rebounded back into Steve's hand. Maggie veered away, savoring the brief grin he'd flashed up at her.

It turned out the Itinerant Court had brought an elephant. Apparently they were calling it their 'war elephant', and they'd kitted it out with armor, spikes, and a box on its back filled with archers. The poor thing was terrified and angry, but any time the Avengers got close the Courtiers jabbed the elephant and it flailed, its weaponized tusks keeping any potential rescuers at a distance.

Maggie tried to swoop down to knock off the archers, but a trebuchet projectile exploded right in her path. She'd have been toast if it wasn't for Wanda, who twisted her hands and created a glowing red chute right through all the debris. Maggie zipped through the chute and out the other side with her heart in her mouth.

In the end Rhodey managed to knock off most of the archers with a well-aimed unibeam, but the elephant itself was saved by the Hulk. The Hulk physically picked up the terrified animal and carried it off, to both the Courtiers and the Avengers' bewilderment. They later found out that he had brought the elephant to the nearest river to calm it down and give it something to eat and drink.

The Avengers were alarmingly good at their jobs. Aside from their rocky start and a few small hiccups, they came together as if they'd been fighting together their whole lives. Maggie felt sharp, precisioned, in tune with her teammates as she cut through the air and swooped on the chain-mailed Courtiers. Her ears echoed with the Avengers' steady stream of comms discussion, the whining Courtier weapons, and the _crunch _and shriek of trebuchets being torn apart.

It ended when Steve and Rhodey ferreted out the leaders (who'd been hiding in some kind of armored carriage) and arrested them. Within a few minutes the rest of the Itinerant Court had surrendered. And it was over. Chapultepec Castle was mostly in one piece, the civilians had been kept safe by Wanda's fierce defense of the castle gates and Tony and Natasha's careful supervision, and the city was safe.

* * *

The Avengers stayed for the cleanup. They carried injured people to the waiting medics, cleared broken building and trees, and escorted the Courtiers to law enforcement. They stayed for hours. Then enough Avengers relief forces (thank you, Pepper) had arrived and made the actual Avengers mostly useless, so they headed back to the parked Quinjet and collapsed into their seats.

Maggie took a moment to cast an eye over the – over _her _team. Everyone was pretty much okay, a little banged up but in one piece. Bruce was basically unconscious, but apparently that was normal after a Hulk-out. Wanda had a nasty cut on her forehead but it had already been stitched up and she seemed more concerned with getting into the rations cupboard.

Maggie and Bucky slumped side-by-side, his head on her shoulder and her cheek on his head. They were usually PDA-phobic, but after that mission they needed each other's touch.

Maggie turned her head slightly so she could see out the back of the Quinjet, and spotted Steve and Tony a few hundred feet away. They walked side by side, speaking lowly. Steve's shield was mounted on his back, and Tony had dissolved the armor so he was left in his rumpled band t-shirt and sweatpants. They made an odd pair: the tall, uniformed soldier and the tinkerer with flailing hands, but in Maggie's eyes it seemed as if for the first time they stood on equal ground.

As the two strode up the ramp and into the Quinjet, the Avengers turned tired eyes on them.

Steve nodded to them all, his shoulders straight. "Alright, everyone. Let's head home."

In the cockpit, Romanoff closed the ramp and fired up the engines.

As they took off, Maggie heard Wanda sigh unhappily from beside her. She turned and cocked an eyebrow.

Wanda saw her looking. "Debrief," she murmured, nodding toward Steve still standing tall and determined at the back of the Quinjet. "I forgot we used to do this. Right after each mission we'd go over all the details and fill out all the paperwork. I know it's good to get the details when we're fresh, but…"

Steve cleared his throat, and everyone looked up again. "We'll, uh… we'll do the debrief back at the Facility, once we've all showered and eaten." He glanced sideways at Tony. "I'm reliably informed that there will be beer."

There was a collective chuckle at that, and Maggie turned to Wanda. "Looks like change is in the air."

"I suspect that might have something to do with our new leadership structure," Wanda replied with a smile.

Maggie looked back to see Steve clap Tony on the shoulder and grin. He said something to Tony, so low that no one else heard, but Maggie read his lips: _We did it._

She let out a breath. "I think this is going to work."

Bucky hummed against her shoulder.

Wanda pulled off her boots and sighed. "I think it's already working."

* * *

Back at the Facility, they debriefed over food and beer. All the paperwork got done correctly thanks to Steve's attention to detail and the Facility staff helping things along, and… it was finished. Mission over. A resounding success.

Tony reeled out dozens of medieval-themed jokes that he hadn't had time to squeeze in during the mission until everyone begged for mercy, and half of them fell asleep on the nearest flat surface.

And if the headlines the next day were anything to go by, Maggie wasn't the only one letting out a breath of relief.

* * *

**A/N: Hope you enjoyed! The next one shot is what a lot of people have been waiting for! Sneak peek:**

_"__Barnes." Tony's voice was casual and acknowledging, almost like a… like a greeting._

_Bucky's head snapped up, his eyes wide, and Tony nodded at him._

_For a good minute of silence Bucky just stared. Tony watched him from across the kitchen, his arms crossed over his chest as he waited for his coffee to finish brewing. _

_Then Bucky's brain kicked back into gear. "Sta- Tony." The name he'd settled on twisted up at the end, as if in a question._

_Tony didn't look like he knew the answer._

**Don't forget to let me know your favorite moment/scene from the Wyvern :)**

* * *

**Reviews**

**ebarnea25: I'm happy that you're happy!**

**Guest: Excellent guesses, but unfortunately no! I guess I gave you a bit of a red herring what with the relationship-centric chapter. Awesome request about Steve and Maggie, I actually just finished writing a one shot with the two of them! I can't wait to post it and see what you think :) As for a teenaged daughter… that may be a while away, but I'll see what I can do ;)**

**Red Vixen: As you can see, it was not All The Single Ladies ;) I'm glad you liked the chapter though! And yes, I too suck at keeping plants alive. That's why I buy fake ones. I did see the new trailer! I'm so shook, and I have so many theories: for example I'm sure that there will be time travel. Hope you enjoyed this chapter!**

**The1975Love: Good to see you over on this story, hello! I'm so glad you're enjoying these one shots :) and that was a very cute thought, I may need to incorporate that now. You're welcome!**


	5. I Don't Like Your Boyfriend (Part One)

**I Don't Like Your Boyfriend – Part One**

**A/N: This one's a three-parter. Thank you for letting me know your favorite Wyvern moments, it's been nice to hear what you loved and what you go back to reread.**

* * *

Tony had four issues with James Buchanan Barnes:

1) He'd killed his parents.

2) He'd kidnapped his sister.

3) He was the catalyst of many of the issues which tore apart the Avengers and Tony's life two years ago.

4) He was dating his sister.

Now, 1-3 he knew were perfectly reasonable issues to hold against a person. _Except. _Except, he knew very well that none of those were Barnes' fault. He knew that Barnes didn't want that. He. Knew.

But he still couldn't stop his blood boiling every time he saw Barnes, couldn't help looking away.

_Get over it. _He sensed those words in the way his team looked at him, he even felt the words churning through his own mind: it was an urge. _Just let it go_. Everyone else had. So why couldn't he?

He knew it wasn't rational, and that frustrated him to no end. He knew, logically, that he had no reason for the anger – and _fear _– that prickled over him when he saw Barnes' face. But logic had no place amongst the painful memories lodged in his chest, right where the arc reactor used to be. That empty, painful place inside him remembered his mom's choking gasps, remembered Maggie's childlike scream, remembered remembered remembered. He couldn't just ignore it.

And as for issue #4… Before the Avengers got back together, Tony had perfected the art of ignoring Bucky Barnes' existence. He could deal with Maggie talking about him, he could even deal knowing that she loved him. Tony listened, and then erased Barnes from his mind.

But that was a hell of a lot harder now that Barnes was actually physically _here._

* * *

The fact that Barnes and Maggie's rooms were on opposite sides of the Avengers' residential area had not stopped them spending inordinate amounts of time together. They ate breakfast together, watched movies, went for walks, visited the city, trained in the gym. Barnes was still getting used to the Facility so she showed him around. They weren't joined at the hip, but they were… together. Very obviously.

Tony watched. Not in a creepy way, he hoped, but a part of him thought that if he observed the two of them together he could begin to understand – understand how Maggie could be around Barnes without seeing those empty, cold eyes glittering with firelight. How she could hold his hand without seeing it wrapped around mom's neck.

To his irritation, Maggie didn't act differently around Barnes – she was just _Maggie_. She teased, and laughed, and went off on long tangents about whatever research she was up to. Barnes listened to the tangents with a look of adoring confusion that made Tony's teeth grind. They didn't touch all that much in public (partly out of deference to him, Tony suspected) but the touches they did share were gentle, full of reassurance or affection or mirth. They had in-jokes. After a few days of careful observation Tony noticed that they had an uncanny ability to pick each other out in a crowd – when Barnes walked into a room packed with Avengers his eyes unfailingly fell on Maggie first, and vice versa. They seemed to revolve in each other's orbit, always aware of each other and able to move and communicate without words. It was spooky.

But they were by far the least overt couple in the Facility. Wanda and Vision walked around hand-in-hand as if they would fall apart if they weren't attached (though they were still a relatively new couple), and Tony knew that himself and Pepper weren't exactly shy about PDA.

In battle and in training, Barnes and Maggie were even more spookily in-sync. That was what unnerved him the most, actually: seeing that hint of how they'd been as the Winter Soldier and the Wyvern. But then he'd see the look on Barnes' face as he watched Maggie soaring through the sky, or he'd catch Maggie watching Barnes as he sparred with Steve or looked down his rifle scope, and the unnerved feeling changed into just… discomfort. Not because he saw something wrong, but because it was getting harder and harder to deny what they meant to each other.

When they didn't know Tony was listening, Maggie and Barnes traded pet names and charged teasing, their heads bent together as if they were sharing a secret. Barnes called her _Meg. _What the hell was that about? Tony couldn't even ask because that would reveal that he'd been paying any attention whatsoever to Barnes, and that… wasn't ideal.

Tony accepted Barnes' presence, but didn't interact with him. Whenever they happened to come across each other alone they'd each look away and carry on with whatever they were doing. They lived in the same space and fought the same battles, but they didn't acknowledge each other's presence. It was safer that way.

* * *

One weekend, Maggie and Tony spent all Saturday in the workshop working on various Avenger uniforms – Tony would never admit it to anyone but he _loved _it, creating a uniform that enhanced each team member's skillset and weapons arsenal. He and Maggie worked well together, talking through the engineering issues and throwing ideas around.

On the Sunday, Maggie made two glasses of the green smoothie he liked and they walked out into the warm sunshine outside the Facility, talking about the Iron Man armor and the upcoming wedding.

Tony felt relaxed, and well-rested, and… _hang on_.

He stopped dead and narrowed his eyes at Maggie. "What are you doing?"

She blinked at him, the picture of innocence. "I'm sorry?"

He pointed at her. "No, I know what you're doing. The workshop, the smoothie, the talking up my armor – you're buttering me up for something."

She held the innocent expression for a second longer, then sighed. "Fine, you got me. Can we sit down?"

He gestured for her to go ahead, his eyes still narrowed, and he followed her to one of the picnic tables outside the main Facility building. They sat opposite each other and Tony crossed his arms across his chest.

Maggie visibly rallied herself. "I was _going _to ease into this naturally, but I should've known better. I think you and I need to have a talk."

He grimaced. _Oh, I know what this is about._

"Yes," she said, as if she could read his thoughts, and then took a deep breath. "I'm in a relationship with Bucky." He stiffened, but she kept talking. "I know you and I have always skirted around this, but I need you to know that Bucky and I are together and that's not going away. I'm not saying this to hurt you, or to get you to do anything, but I think I owe you transparency." She took another deep breath. "Bucky and I have actually been in contact for a while."

He frowned, and his frown deepened when she lifted that black metal pendant she always wore.

"This is a Kimoyo bead. A couple of times during the whole trial thing, Sam got in contact with me. He offered me an out if I wanted it, and I think he and the others did a fair bit behind the scenes to help me out – that Red Room survivor? I think Natasha asked her to testify. The last time I saw Sam he gave me this Kimoyo bead, and a cure for my trigger words."

Tony sat back, his arms unconsciously uncrossing.

"Bucky had been in cryofreeze in Wakanda until they healed him, and as soon as they had the cure they offered it to me too." Her face was serious. "Once he was awake they gave him the twin to this bead and we were able to communicate – it was slow, and only text-based, but we've been exchanging letters ever since."

Tony's stomach twisted. He didn't know what his face showed her, but her eyes were filled with gravity as she went on: "I'm sorry for hiding it from you, I really am. I didn't want to involve you in me breaking the Accords by communicating with a fugitive, but I also… I think I was still afraid that you'd push me away." At the sudden indignant look on his face she held up a hand. "I know now that you wouldn't have, but I guess… I was scared. I…" she pushed her hair back from her forehead, seeming suddenly overwhelmed. "I can't help the way I feel about Bucky. And I'm not sorry for it. He is one of the best things that ever happened to me, and I want to be with him for the rest of my life." Her tone was calm as she spoke, as if she were explaining some project design she'd come up with. "_But_. I don't expect or demand that you feel a certain way; you're entitled to your emotions, and I wouldn't ever take that away from you."

"So why the talk," Tony said, his voice flat. This wasn't the talk he'd been expecting. He'd been expecting '_it wasn't Bucky's fault'_, or '_why can't you just be happy for me'._

Maggie eyed him warily before she replied. "I want you to know how I feel. You once told me…" she swallowed. "You once told me that I don't have to be sorry."

He remembered – after she'd been high on Maggia hallucinogens, rambling about her metal-armed boyfriend. The next morning she'd said sorry and he'd said _you don't have to be. _He'd meant it.

"I hope that one day, things might be okay between all of us," Maggie said softly. "I hope that one day, you and Bucky might get along. But that's just a hope, and if it never comes true then I'll be okay. Like I said, you are entitled to the way you feel. I want you to know that if you ever feel uncomfortable, or disrespected, or concerned, you can talk to me." Her eyes glimmered. "That's… that's what I wanted to say. You don't have to say anything. I just wanted to let you know."

With that she rose from her seat, circled the picnic table, and leaned down to wrap her arms around him. He didn't move; too lost in staring at the empty space where she'd just been sitting. After a few seconds she let go and walked away.

Tony didn't say anything. Although, half an hour later when he was still sitting there staring into empty space, he really wished he had.

* * *

That afternoon Tony wandered into his and Pepper's suite of rooms. They were meant to discuss details about the wedding, and Pepper had a huge stack of papers on the coffee table in front of her.

But she took one look at him when he walked in and said: "Oh dear. Something happened with Maggie, didn't it?"

He looked up. "There's no way you figured that out from my face."

She arched an eyebrow. "Yes way." She held up her left hand and waggled her ring at him. "Fiancée, remember? I think I know you pretty well."

He slumped toward the couch and collapsed dramatically onto it. "Still, how did you know it was about Maggie?"

Pepper got to her feet, padded across the room and perched on the arm of the couch. She reached down and brushed a tender finger against the furrow between his brows. "You only look like _that_ when it's about Maggie. So what happened?"

He sighed – dramatic, again. "Go on, Ms Mind Reader."

She cocked her head, peering down at him. He looked up at her, watching the way the sunlight cast a golden halo around her strawberry blonde hair. They'd both changed so much since he first put on the armor. Tony found himself reflecting that she was somehow softer these days, and yet so much stronger.

Pepper's brows drew together. "Oh. It's about Bucky."

"Bu– since when is he _Bucky_?" Tony sat bolt upright and spun so he could face her.

"Since it was his name, Tony," Pepper replied patiently, her eyes calm.

"It's a stupid name–"

"– and since I got to know him," she continued.

Tony shut his mouth so hard his teeth clacked.

She took in his stony expression and sighed. "Tony, if you don't blame Maggie for the things she did under HYDRA then you can't blame him. You know you can't."

"I _know_," he said, throwing up his hands and falling back on the couch again. "Despite what everyone seems to believe I _am _capable of understanding the situation. But Pepper…" he met her eyes. "I watched him _kill my mom_."

"And so did Maggie," she said lowly, and reached down to rest her hand on his knee. Her eyes welled. "I'm not telling you to get over it. That's something that no one should have to go through. But…" she bit her lip. "Maggie doesn't love the man who killed your parents – the Winter Soldier. Maggie loves _Bucky_. And she loves you. That's a difficult situation for her."

"And I'm making it more difficult," he inferred.

"That's not what I was going to say," she sighed. "He's a nice person, Tony. He's polite, he's funny, he's very sweet to Maggie–"

"That's the problem, it's making it harder for me to dislike him."

"_Tony_," she sighed, and slipped off the arm of the couch so she lay half on him, half by his side on the couch. He adjusted so her pointy elbows weren't digging into him, and she took advantage of his distraction and kissed his forehead. "I'm always on your side, you know that. If you want to talk more then I'm always here. But it sounds like this is something you need to figure out in your own head. And in here." She laid her hand over his chest, her thumb sweeping over where the arc reactor used to be.

They lay in silence like that for a few minutes, Pepper's hand on his chest and Tony's brain ticking over.

Until:

"Go on, read my mind. What am I thinking _now_?"

Pepper took in the sudden gleam in his eye and his waggling eyebrows and laughed. "Funnily enough, I don't need mind reading powers to–" she cut herself off when she kissed him, and he pulled her in tighter.

* * *

Bruce was different after his time in space. He seemed more centered in himself, less like he was walking on eggshells, but he was still his soft-spoken, awkward self. He'd taken an interest in inter-dimensional physics and had been researching it in his very own Avengers Facility science lab, often collaborating with Dr Selvig and Dr Foster (who Tony had hired after stuff from space tried to kill them all again, along with her mouthy intern/research assistant/friend).

But today Bruce was working in Tony's workshop, the two of them designing a new and improved Hulk-proof room for the Facility. There'd always been one, even when Bruce had been missing, but now they were working on one that was less like a padded cell and more like an _apartment._

"He had one in Sakaar," Bruce had explained. "It's not his fault he's angry, and even if he has to be kept away from others for their own safety… he's less likely to want to smash if he's surrounded by stuff he likes."

Tony had no arguments. And the challenge of combining near-impenetrable architecture with tasteful interior design proved to be a fun project.

He was having fun, which was why he even surprised himself when in the middle of the afternoon he blurted out: "What do you think of Barnes?"

Bruce looked up from his tensile strength projections, eyes wide. "Barnes?"

"You know, _Bucky _Barnes," he said, his mouth twisting at the stupid name. Then he hesitated. "Wait, you do know about… everything?"

Bruce adjusted his glasses. "I, uh… think so? I know… about your parents, and – I know there was a fight, and…" he kept fiddling with the glasses, avoiding Tony's gaze. "And… he and Maggie–"

"Okay, so you know everything," Tony waved his hand. "And?"

Bruce scratched the back of his neck. "I don't know if I should get involved–"

Right. The best way to get Bruce talking: annoy the shit out of him. Tony took a deep breath. "Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce–"

"– Tony are you sure you want _me _to–"

"–_ Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce Bruce_–"

"Okay, okay!" Bruce held up his hands in surrender and Tony refilled his lungs. Slowly, Bruce took off his glasses and tucked them into his lab coat pocket. When he met Tony's eyes again his face was serious. "I… I've only gotten to know Bu- Barnes a little, but he and I have gotten along pretty well so far. He isn't afraid of me because of the Hulk, which is… rare." At Tony's frown, Bruce smiled. "Less rare among this crowd." His smile slipped away and he took a long, slow breath. "I don't know the details of what Barnes went through – what your your sister went through – but I've gotten the broad strokes. I know they were controlled, I know they did terrible things."

"And… and you can just let it go?" Tony asked, his entire focus centered on his friend.

Bruce met his eyes. "Tony… I've killed people." He took a moment to let the words sink in. "I don't remember it, except maybe in flashes, but… people are dead because of something I couldn't control." His eyes went dark. "I think that's something you all forget sometimes."

And… and Bruce was Tony's _friend_, and the very thought that he felt guilt for those lives made Tony want to crumple something in his hands. His brain _knew_, could see all the parallels. And yet.

Bruce didn't beat Howard Stark's face into a pulp. Bruce didn't put his hand on Maria Stark's throat and squeeze. Bruce didn't grab Maggie, five years old and screaming, by her skinny arm and drag her toward men who would spend the next twenty years tearing her apart.

Tony took a shuddering breath and reached up to cover his eyes.

"Sorry," Bruce mumbled.

That startled a laugh out of Tony, and he looked up to see Bruce back to looking awkward again. "Don't be sorry, I basically just bullied you for your opinion. I'm just…" he gestured at himself, and then realized he didn't have any follow up words for the beginning of that sentence.

Bruce frowned sympathetically. "It's complicated."

"Ugh, Bruce, don't quote Meryl Streep movies at me." He clapped his hands together. "That reminds me: for the Hulk room windows we should look into nanotech. I've been working on making the tech transparent…" he whirled back to his designs, and an owlish Bruce blinked at his back.

"How did Meryl Streep remind you of the Hulk's windows?" he asked. Tony was too deep in the science to hear.

* * *

Tony was strolling through the Avengers Facility foyer, his mind on wedding arrangements, when he heard a familiar voice echo across the wide room. He looked up, and a smile broke across his face.

On the other side of the foyer Happy was escorting Shirley Kemp into the building, her arms wrapped around an enormous Tupperware container full of cookies and her white hair shining in the sunlight. She was slightly stooped, but she looked well.

Tony perked up and walked over to her. Most of the old people he hung around with were supersoldiers, aliens, or in Congress, so Shirley Kemp was a nice change.

"Mrs Kemp," he called when he approached, a smile on his face.

She looked up and her faded eyes glinted. "Mr Stark," she replied warmly. "How are you?"

"Well my insomnia is only mild these days, so…"

"Ah, try getting old!" she leaned in. "I wake up every _three hours _to go to the bathroom. Do you know how frustrating that is?"

"Not yet, but I look forward to it." Tony grinned at her. His and Shirley's relationship had been founded on a mutual desire to protect Maggie and consume baked goods, and unfolded from there. "Kemp, you're looking as radiant as ever. What brings you to our–"

"Shirley, hi."

Tony looked over his shoulder. The foyer was split-level, with the upper level overlooking the main strip on the ground floor, and standing at the top of the stairs with one hand resting on the steel banister was _Barnes_.

Barnes's face was soft in the way it usually only was when he was with Maggie (not that Tony tried to notice), and his voice had been… happy. Barnes's eyes darted to Tony but they weren't suspicious, just acknowledging that he was there.

Shirley beamed up at him. "Hello, big brother!"

And that… Tony had to blink a couple of times, because that was _weird._

Maggie appeared by Barnes's side. "Shirley! Why are you carrying that, let me help you." She darted down the stairs and tried to take the Tupperware container, but Shirley smacked her hand. Barnes, who'd followed Maggie down the stairs, smiled.

"I'm perfectly capable of carrying baked goods, Margaret Stark." The elderly woman turned to Tony. "Do you want some? We're going to watch some old film reels." She nodded to a bag in Happy's arms.

Tony blinked and looked between the three of them – Barnes and Maggie side by side, hovering as if figuring out how to take the cookies from Shirley, and Shirley smiling like this was just any old family visit.

He took a step back. "I've got… busy." His eyes darted to Maggie and he saw it – he saw her face fall, just for a second before she covered it with a smile and then a smirk.

"Sounds important," she said. The words were light, and she nodded as if to say _go, it's okay. _

After one last glance at Shirley and Barnes (Barnes had leaned in to wrap his metal arm around his sister, and she pressed a kiss against his cheek) Tony fled, frowning.

As he sped-walk blindly in search of his lab, Tony stewed. He knew Maggie was trying so hard to be understanding and to not rub her relationship with Barnes in his face. She didn't demand that they socialize. She _got _it.

But Tony couldn't help but feel like he was letting her down.

* * *

The next morning Bucky sat by himself in the Avengers kitchen, drinking a cup of the aromatic tea Dr Banner had recommended as he read a book: _The Handmaid's Tale. _He didn't like the stuff about mind control (hit a little too close to home) but Ms Potts had insisted it was one of the most important books of the twentieth century and so far he had to agree with her.

He heard movement at the doorway, and looked up to greet whichever of his new teammates had shown up for a mid-morning snack.

It was Tony. The billionaire inventor had apparently strolled into the kitchen and frozen at the sight of Bucky there, alone. He wore a suit today instead of his tattered workshop clothes, his hair neatly combed and his wary eyes hidden behind orange glasses. His body vibrated with tension.

Bucky's shoulders hunched and his eyes darted back to his book. He could handle the careful, stony silence from Stark when others were around, but when it was just the two of them in a room the tension was oppressive. He didn't think Stark had any more violent thoughts towards him, but… the bloody and painful history between them was a divide that Tony was apparently (very justifiably) unwilling to cross. The message was very clear: _I'm tolerating you here, so don't get in my way. _Bucky knew it upset Maggie, not that she'd ever let him see that. And she never talked about it either. It was frustrating to see her close off parts of herself, always wary of her audience, but Bucky had no one to blame but HYDRA and himself.

So he hunkered down and waited for Tony to leave.

Tony moved into the kitchen, and Bucky listened to the sound of the fridge opening and the coffee machine whirring.

Then: "Barnes." Tony's voice was casual and acknowledging, almost like a… like a _greeting._

Bucky's head snapped up, his eyes wide, and Tony nodded at him.

For a good minute of silence Bucky just _stared_. Tony watched him from across the kitchen, his arms crossed over his chest as he waited for his coffee to finish brewing.

Then Bucky's brain kicked back into gear. "Sta- Tony." The name he'd settled on twisted up at the end, as if in a question.

Tony didn't look like he knew the answer. He turned, grabbed his coffee, and then walked out of the kitchen.

Bucky stared at the empty doorway for another minute after he left, his thoughts churning. They were greeting each other now? Did that mean Bucky could greet him? What did this mean?

He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He was used to Maggie, who was up front about what she wanted and how she planned to get it. Even Steve, the stubborn jackass, was easy enough to read. Tony Stark was a whole new experience.

* * *

Two days later, Tony walked into the common room to find Maggie and Barnes on the couch, mid laugh about something. When they looked up and noticed him, the laughter died.

Tony kept his eye-roll _mental_, then said: "Hey, Mags. Barnes."

Maggie's eyes shot wide open and she glanced from Tony to Barnes. Barnes gave her a small shrug, then turned back to the doorway.

"Tony," he acknowledged.

Maggie's eyes went even wider. "Hey Tony," she replied, her voice low as if she was worried he'd startle like a frightened animal. "Did, uh… did you see what Bruce was working on yesterday?"

And that cut the tension. He and Maggie had a brief chat about how Bruce was a mad genius disguised as a sleepy professor, and even Barnes chimed in, mentioning that he'd heard Bruce muttering about harnessing cosmic powers to travel dimensions while they'd been in the elevator together. After a few minutes Tony ruffled Maggie's hair, dodged her annoyed swat, and walked out.

Once he was out of sight, he stopped in his tracks and paused to reflect. _Weird. _He cocked his head. _But not awful._

* * *

**A/N: Before you comment here with any form of Tony, Bucky, or Steve hate, allow me to offer you an alternative: don't.**

**Please follow, favorite and review to let me know what you think!**

* * *

**Reviews**

**Red Vixen: Thank you lovely, I'm glad you liked the battle scene! And that is an amazing favorite moment, thanks for letting me know – I still remember how hard it was to write those first moments after they broke away from HYDRA, and all the thought I put in to where their heads might be at and how they would think about being "human". So I'm glad it stuck with you. I agree about the Quantum Realm theory, but I don't want any spoilers either! So I'll be seeing Endgame as soon as humanly possible. Thank you for the birthday wishes, the French and Romanian were a nice change after the Japanese birthday wishes! Hope you had a good week.**

**The1975Love: Hello hello, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I felt it was important to show the team as a cohesive unit for the first time, and explore their new leadership and teamwork dynamics. And I'm glad you're still fully stanning Maggie and Bucky – cute! Hope you enjoyed this first part of a three-parter :)**

**Guest: Thank you! Wow those three scenes are amazing, and tbh they're some of my favorites. In particular Maggie's blow up at Tony in front of Pepper I'd written _months _before I ever actually got up to that part in the story, because I knew that would be the make or break moment. Thank you so much for your kind, kind, words, they gave me a big smile at work and will probably continue to make me smile over the next few days! Hope you enjoyed this first part of a three parter, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend :)**


	6. I Don't Like Your Boyfriend (Part Two)

**I Don't Like Your Boyfriend – Part Two**

After that, things were almost easy. Tony and Barnes exchanged casual greetings whenever they saw each other, and sometimes mutually participated in group conversations.

Sam and Rhodey (the "normal ones", as they'd dubbed themselves) bullied everyone else into joining in for a movie night, so on Saturday evening they gathered in the common room with popcorn and drinks and a very-nearly-violent argument about what movie to watch. Peter and Clint had shown up so the final decision went to them; they decided on _A Bug's Life_, of all movies, and Peter settled down upside-down on the couch.

"This event is juvenile," Tony proclaimed as he fetched his popcorn and sat dramatically on Pepper's lap in the one-person sofa. She instinctively wrapped her arms around him to steal his popcorn.

"You should be right at home then," Maggie snarked from a few seats away. She and Barnes sat side-by-side, their legs tangled together.

"Shh, the movie," Wanda hissed, and they all fell silent to watch. (This silence lasted approximately one and a half minutes until Bruce blurted out: "Those ants are anatomically incorrect", which started a snark war about how offended Scott Lang would be by this movie, and devolved into general banter about the unfolding plot of grasshoppers exploiting ant labor).

Halfway through the next movie (_Hairspray_, which had been _Natasha's _suggestion), Maggie fell asleep on Barnes's shoulder. Tony tried not to notice how relaxed and _happy _she looked as she slept.

Tony liked messing with people while they slept – a hangover from his childhood as a prankster and the many many drunken parties he'd been to. He'd learned that Maggie was difficult to mess with in her sleep, after she'd almost broken his hand when he tried to draw on her face.

So he'd prepared. When the last movie ended and the Avengers began to murmur about heading to bed, Tony retrieved a small, innocuous-looking pouch from behind a bookshelf and stalked toward the sleeping Maggie.

There was a tense moment when Barnes sensed Tony approaching and looked over his shoulder with a confused look on his face. For a long moment Barnes just stared at him, frozen a few feet away with the open pouch in his hand.

And then understanding crossed Barnes's face. And he _grinned._

A few moments later, Pepper looked up and sighed. "Tony, you know that's not a good idea."

Tony didn't reply. He was too busy sprinkling his sleeping sister with glitter while Barnes kept very still, his eyes glinting with laughter.

Avengers around the room snorted. Sam whispered: "Rhodey's out too, get him."

Tony would never turn down an opportunity to cover Rhodey in glitter.

* * *

When Maggie woke up she instantly noticed the sparkling glitter in her hair, over her face, and all through her clothes. She spluttered and shoved away from the laughing Barnes, pawing at her shirt.

"You _bastard_," she hissed, then narrowed her eyes at Barnes. "Hang on." Slowly her gaze slid from Barnes, across the room of laughing Avengers, and rested on Tony. "_You_."

He put a hand to his chest, feigning confusion. "Me?"

Her mouth fell open, and she glanced back to Barnes. He winked at her. Her mouth snapped shut again with a _click, _and she looked between Barnes and Tony with a venomous glare.

"I will have my revenge," she warned them, and then darted toward Tony. He tried to escape but she had the unfair advantage of super-soldier serum, so ten seconds later he was ineffectually trying to push her foot off his chest as she ruffled her hands through her hair over him, raining down glitter.

When she finally let him up she was still glaring, but under the expression Tony could see _glee_. She was glad they'd teamed up, even if it meant she was going to be sparkly for the next week.

Across the room, Rhodey grunted and jerked awake. "What the… what the _hell_?"

* * *

A week after the movie night, Steve pulled Tony aside at the end of a meeting with the analysts. Natasha was still in the room, but she was looking over a folder of notes and expertly pretending not to eavesdrop.

"Hey," Steve said hesitantly, "I'm… I'm glad to see you and Bucky getting along." His eyebrows were drawn together and his expression was that earnest, _I only want the best for you_ one that Tony always found half irritating, half endearing. They got on much better these days, though Barnes remained a sticky point.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Whatever, you're just glad I'm not trying to beat him up anymore." There was a crackle of tension. "Too soon?"

Steve huffed a laugh. "Nah, I guess that's true too."

Natasha had been sitting back in her comfortable leather swivel chair, very carefully not giving a shit, but at that she chimed in: "I'm just glad that Bucky's not beating _me _up any more."

Steve looked mortified. "Natasha, you should've said–"

She smirked. "Oh calm down Steve. So he shot me a few times, it's all blood under the bridge."

Steve rubbed his forehead. "I don't think I'll ever know what's going on in your head."

"Good."

"How's that going for you, Nat?" Tony asked, plunging his hands into his suit pockets. "Living side by side with the guy who – by my count – shot you twice, tried to murder your old boss, and choked you out on a cafeteria table?"

Natasha's cool green eyes fell on him. "Keeping score?"

"Apparently I'm the only one who is."

She crossed one leg over the other. "The Winter Soldier has been in my life for a long time." She looked right into his eyes. "So has the Wyvern."

Tony tried not to glare. Flippant, indifferent – that was the mantle he always wore.

Natasha continued: "The Winter Soldier shot me, but the Wyvern would have if he hadn't." Her shoulders straightened. "The only reason I'm alive today is because Clint saw a violent loveless murderer doing jobs for a cruel organization and decided to give her another shot. He believed I could offer the world more than death, and he decided to trust me. A stupid decision which should have gotten him killed, but it meant… everything to me." She shrugged one shoulder. "And one person believing in me turned into two, turned into five, turned into…" she counted on her fingers. "Lots."

Tony eyed her down, and she didn't flinch from his gaze. She never had. After a few more seconds of silent staring, Tony turned on his heel and walked out.

Steve turned to Natasha. "Why'd you say all that?"

She leaned back in her chair and picked up her manila folder as if nothing had happened. "Because he needed to hear it."

* * *

A week later, Maggie went missing.

Missing in the loosest sense of the word, because even though they didn't know _where _she was, they knew exactly what she was doing and who she was with (or rather, who she'd gone to fight).

A few days ago they'd gotten wind of a pro-HYDRA organization attempting to mimic the defunct tyrannical group. They'd been dabbling in weapons dealing, political manipulation and human trafficking, and they'd also started making threats against the Avengers. They were a low priority really, a bunch of fanatic try-hards, but there'd been rumors that they'd developed weapons designed to target specific Avengers.

Maggie had been heading the team of analysts looking into the group (they called themselves the _Serpents_), when that morning, as the analysts put it, she stopped in the middle of her work, got to her feet, and marched out of the operations room. She hadn't been seen since, and F.R.I.D.A.Y. wasn't disclosing her location.

The Avengers had gathered in the operations room, trying to figure out where she'd gone. They were all worried, talking over one another as they theorized locations of the Serpents' base, but their stress levels didn't hold a candle to Tony and Bucky's.

Tony paced back and forth across the central dais of the operations room, his mind working mile-a-minute. Theories and tracking equations flowed across his tongue just as quickly as insults against Maggie's general intellect and life preservation instincts. He barely even noticed Barnes, who was as silent and still as a statue as he eyed the security feeds of Maggie's last few moments in the facility. His lips were pressed so tightly together they were white, and his grey eyes were hard.

"– don't know how stupid you have to be to leave behind a literal team of superheroes to go fight crazy assholes by yourself–" Tony ranted, his fingers twisting through geographic projections.

Natasha cut him off: "She'd have a reason for leaving without telling us, she'd have done the calculations of her chances fighting with us versus alone–"

"I think we all know why she went alone," Tony snapped, "She'd put herself into any amount of harm to protect us, regardless of her chances of success."

"The Serpents' activity has been restricted to the States so far, so their headquarters is likely to be here too," Rhodey said, clearly hoping to cut through Tony's rising temper.

"No duh," Tony grit out. "I've already isolated them to the west coast."

"Vision, you got anything?" asked Steve, his hair askew from where he'd been running his hand through it.

"Unfortunately not," Vision replied, his voice tense. "Wherever Maggie is, she isn't on any CCTV cameras or sparking any police reports."

"That could be good," Bruce pointed out.

"Or very bad," Tony replied.

Sam sighed. "As much as I disagree with her methods, Maggie knows what she can handle, right? Surely she wouldn't go non-contact unless she was sure of herself."

"Like I _keep saying_," Tony said, "if she thought we were in danger she'd head in with no backup and no plan. She's a _goddamn moron_–_"_

"Okay," Barnes said, speaking for the first time since they'd all arrived in the operations room. He gestured to the security camera feed, where he'd zoomed in on Maggie's face as she walked out of the operations room. "I can't say for certain but it looks to me like Meg figured something out in her research – not just the Serpents location but something about what they were up to. And this" – he gestured to the look on her face: determined, her eyes glinting – "Isn't what she'd look like if she was going into a suicide mission. She's not _sad_, she's confident. Whatever she's flying into, she thinks she can handle it." Barnes' hard grey eyes softened a little. "She _can _handle herself, but–"

"Excuse me if I don't feel reassured," Tony interrupted. "You haven't exactly kept Maggie out of danger in the past."

The words dropped like a lead weight. Throughout the operations room people tensed up and slowly, cautiously, turned to look from Tony to Barnes. Wanda took a physical step back from the sudden crackling emotions. Tony hesitated in the middle of tracking the Serpents, his gut churning.

Barnes turned on Tony and his eyes flashed. "Excuse me?"

And just like that, the second of regret Tony had felt flared up and shriveled as he remembered a metal hand digging into his armor, remembered that very face cold and dead on a black and white screen. He took a step forward. "Oh, I think you heard me."

Steve and Rhodey both shoved between Barnes and Tony – Steve stared down Barnes, and Rhodey planted a hand on Tony's chest.

"Back off!" he commanded, and Tony turned away with a snarl. As he turned, he saw Barnes shoot a glare over Steve's shoulder.

Natasha, the only one who hadn't been staring at Tony and Barnes, cleared her throat. "A transmission just came in." She brought up a holographic screen with a set of coordinates. "Maggie's decided to invite us along."

There was a moment of tense silence as the gathered Avengers stared at the glowing coordinates. And then, as one, they snapped into action.

* * *

The Avengers descended on a seething nest of Serpent agents.

"Hey guys," came Maggie's voice over the comms once they were in range. The Avengers let out a collective breath of relief, and Barnes ran a shaky hand over his face. "So as you might notice these guys aren't very happy–"

"Maggie what the _hell were you thinking_?" Tony hissed, and dove out the back of the Quinjet to jet down to the Serpent base.

"Uh, I was thinking that these guys had spent months setting up a series of anti-Avengers traps and that I'd disable those before we all hit the base."

"Why didn't you tell us?" demanded Bucky.

"Because you'd have stopped me. And the Serpents were going to move a majority of their prisoners to another location like, now, so there was a time crunch."

Tony felt like he was spitting venom when he hissed back: "_You should have_–"

"Fight with each other later," Steve cut in, his voice terse. "Fight the Serpents now."

And the Avengers moved in.

* * *

Maggie had long since cleared out the Serpents' nasty basement traps – EMPs, motion-sensor explosives, DNA-targeted missiles, cages, and dozens of other clever but painful traps designed to exploit individual Avengers' weaknesses. There'd even been some kind of Hulk-proof room that was scary in how effective it looked. She'd only managed to destroy it all by slipping in with no warning and no sound, stealthily and speedily obliterating each trap. The Serpents never suspected that she even knew they existed before she was ripping them apart from the inside.

This left the upper part of the base perfectly vulnerable for the Avengers to attack.

As she met up with the rest of the team and joined them in going after the Serpents, she noticed an odd tension amongst them. It took her a few minutes, but she soon isolated that tension to two people: Tony, and Bucky. They fought as efficiently and lethally as ever, but something about the way they moved and spoke had Maggie's hackles rising. There was anger, and fear, and guilt… some of it directed at her (and fair enough, she knew what she'd signed up for when she left with no warning), but not all. Something had happened.

It kept her on edge for the rest of the fight, through the cleanup, and as they all filed into the Quinjet. She was vaguely aware of Natasha pointing out that this wasn't the only Serpents base, and that some of their agents had managed to escape. She filed that away for later.

When Maggie sat down in her usual seat on the Quinjet she tensed, wondering whether Tony or Bucky would be the one to snap and start yelling at her. Tony kept shooting her crotchety, wounded glances, whereas Bucky's eyes warred between relief and exasperation. He'd checked her over for injuries the moment he'd spotted her in the middle of the Serpent base, and seemed to fold in on himself when he found her unharmed.

It turned out neither Bucky nor Tony got a chance to yell at her, because once they were safely in the air Steve got out of his seat, marched over to Maggie and… gave her the most heart-breaking _I am disappointed in you_ expression that she'd ever seen in her life.

Her heart shot into her mouth. "Steve, I…"

He held up a hand, and she shut her mouth. "No," he said, and folded his arms across his chest. "Let's talk about this."

* * *

For the whole hour-long Quinjet ride back to the Facility Steve painstakingly went over every decision Maggie had made from the moment she'd started researching the Serpents to the moment the Avengers arrived at the base. He dissected her decisions, outlined the consequences of her actions, and explained all the alternative things she could have done: alerting even a few other Avengers so they could alert the rest when the coast was clear (Natasha readily volunteered for this role), alerting them all and taking the time to explain the situation (Maggie wasn't convinced of that one, but she hadn't had a lot of time to think it through), or trusting the Avengers to evade the traps so they could take down the Serpents as a team.

The interrogation was exhausting, and at the end Maggie was kicking herself for not trusting her team. Because that was what it came down to – she'd been so afraid of their vulnerability that the intel about the anti-Avengers traps the Serpents had planned kickstarted something instinctive and primal in her. But, as Steve had very rightly pointed out, this was their job too. They knew what they were doing.

The whole time, Bucky and Tony sat on opposite ends of the Quinjet and tried to ignore each other, though Maggie didn't miss the occasional glare they shot in each other's direction. Her stomach churned.

When they arrived at the Facility Maggie felt very small and very foolish, and meekly apologized to each Avenger as they stepped off the Quinjet. Bucky brushed his hand against hers and showed with a glimmer of his eyes that she was forgiven – but then his gaze slid back to Tony, hardened, and he walked out of the Quinjet.

Tony was last to leave the jet. But instead of stopping by her side at the top of the ramp he strode right past, his dark eyes pointedly not looking at her.

Maggie marched down the ramp after him. "Tony." He stopped. The hangar was empty now, leaving just Tony in the empty space and Maggie at the foot of the jet. She sighed. "Talk to me."

He didn't turn around. "What do you want me to talk about." His voice was low, flat. Dangerous.

"Whatever it is that's wrong," she murmured. "I know you're angry at me for leaving by myself, and I'm _sorry. _This… this isn't just about that, though, is it?"

His shoulders stiffened. "What makes you say that?"

"Something happened, I can tell. You know I can."

"Maybe we should call _you _Hawkeye," he said bitterly.

"Tony, _spit it out._"

"But I can't!" he snapped back as he whirled around, his eyes ablaze. "Because if I do then _I'm _the asshole, because I'm the one who can't let go of the past, who can't let go of the fact that the guy living in my house is the same one who _killed my parents _and _kidnapped my sister_."

Maggie's shoulders slumped. But she didn't even try to say anything, because Tony wasn't done.

"And it's not even that," he continued, his hair askew and his hands balling. "I can't even define why exactly I'm furious with Barnes and that frustrates me, I'm… I'm angry at myself because I don't want to be angry at you for being _happy_, because _I'm _the one making this situation difficult, because _I can't let go._"

"I'm not angry at you," Maggie breathed, her eyes welling at the intensity of Tony's emotions.

"I know, and I think maybe it'd be easier if you were," he said desperately. "Because right now I'm being irrational, and I can tell myself that over and over but it doesn't make it stop–"

"And that's okay. It's not… I don't want you to _let go_, Tony, our parents were _murdered_–"

"– his hands," Tony cut in, and the non-sequitur surprised Maggie into silence. He drew himself up straight, and the darkness that rolled in over his face made her shiver. "His _hands. _His metal hand, he used that to smash dad's face in until he died. His flesh hand, he wrapped those fingers around mom's throat and he _squeezed _until she ran out of air."

Maggie's breath froze in her chest and she took a stumbling step backwards.

Tony's eyes were riveted on her face. "How do you look at his hands without seeing that? How do you ever see anything but death?" His tone wasn't accusatory – wasn't even angry any more. It was pure desperation, as if he'd fall apart without the answer.

Maggie couldn't breathe, but Tony needed an answer. So she forced herself to breathe: sucked in one long, deep breath and exhaled, as mechanical as a machine. She closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to see Tony's haunted face. For a moment she almost said _I don't know, _but she knew that was the wrong answer. "It didn't happen overnight," she whispered. "I… for _years _every time I saw him, after I got through enough of the programming to remember, I felt nothing but rage_. _The kind of frozen rage that just… crystallizes every violent, vengeful thought." Tony made a wet noise, but she didn't open her eyes.

She breathed again: in through the nose, out through the mouth. "But then… his hands. I had a malfunction in a garden in Tsiblisi, a panic attack. I'd just murdered… just murdered two little boys. And he came up to me, and put his metal hand on my shoulder, and with his flesh hand he… rubbed my back." She opened her eyes to see Tony, his eyes wet and wide open. "He calmed me down, told me _it will pass. _And then I remembered who he– what he'd done, and I tried to kill him. That was the last time I tried to end his life, that night. Because I had my hand around his throat, and that was the moment I realized that my hands were just as bloody as his."

She shuddered. "Yes, his hands caused _so much_ violence. But once we broke away from HYDRA, he just _stopped. _Instead of violence he patched up my wounds, calmed me down, _created _things. The hands that took mom's life didn't belong to Bucky. But when they belonged to him – when his body belonged to him – he used them to be kind. Because he is a _kind _person, Tony." Her voice shook, and she lifted her chin so she wouldn't burst into sobs. "It breaks my heart that his hands are the ones that ended mom and dad's and so many people's lives. There's nothing that makes that better, for him or for us. And I wish I could make it better for you, but I…" her voice trembled treacherously. "I _can't._"

And with that she fled, darting past her brother with the barest breath of "I'm sorry," before she ran through the hangar door.

Tony stood as still as a statue in her wake, his face etched with exhaustion. He closed his eyes.

* * *

**A/N: Heyy, remember how I said these one shots would be fun and light-hearted? My bad. The third part is super long though, hopefully that makes up for it.**

* * *

**Reviews:**

**Anissa: I'm so glad you're enjoying it and want to read more :) As for Ross and the Accords, I'm more focused on the Avengers interpersonal relationships so let's just say for now that the Avengers have negotiated their own version of the Accords where they're held accountable, but aren't basically indentured slaves. I'll get more into the meat of the Accords in the main story. Thank you for the question and the review!**

**Red Vixen: I enjoy domestic avengers as well, it's nice. Though I do like to shake them up from time to time ;) Hahaha I really like Tony and Bruce's relationship, I think they complement each other well. Hope you had a great weekend!**

**The1975Love: Aw I'm glad you enjoyed the last chapter, it's a tough situation for all the characters and no one's right or wrong. I'm glad you liked Shirley swatting Maggie ;) Luckily everyone has so far been pretty cool about the Bucky/Tony/Steve situation, but I wanted to put out a warning just because in the main story of the Wyvern people got super mad about canon decisions that characters had made. Like I was the one whose idea it was! I don't care if people are angry about canon events, just don't take it out on me. Thank you for the support, it's good to hear :)**


	7. I Don't Like Your Boyfriend (Part Three)

**I Don't Like Your Boyfriend – Part Three**

**CW: Violence, blood, some swearing. (Or as I call it, the Tony Stark Special).**

* * *

"Doll, I can tell you're not fine – do you want to talk about it?"

"I don't think talking can really help with this situation, Bucky."

"Never know until you try."

"I really appreciate it, I do, but…" sitting on the soft leather couch in Bucky's living quarters, Maggie ran a hand through her hair. "I can't be on either side of this… whatever it is. I won't choose."

Bucky didn't reach out to comfort her; every line of her body was rigid in a way that he knew meant _do not touch._ "I'm sorry we made you feel like you have to," he murmured. "I didn't want that." He sighed. "I shouldn't have snapped at him, it made everything worse–"

"Don't," she breathed, hunched in on herself. "You don't have to apologize for standing up to Tony when he…" she shook her head. "No, I'm not doing this."

Maggie took a deep breath, clearing her lungs, then hopped to her feet. She stepped toward the other side of the couch, where Bucky sat with his hands on his knees and a wrenched expression on his face. She crouched in front of him. "Hey." He looked up and met her eyes. "You and me, we're okay. We're always going to be okay. Right?"

His eyes softened. "Right. But–"

She silenced him with a quick press of her lips against his. "No buts. We're okay. You have nothing to apologize for." She squeezed his hand. "And neither does Tony. This whole crappy situation, we can live with it." Her eyes flickered. "We can… we can live with it, right?"

He flipped his hand under hers so their palms met. "'Course," he murmured, and leaned forward until his forehead pressed against hers. She met his blue-grey eyes and a smile twitched her lips. "You and me, we're okay."

Her half-smile turned into a grin. "You're such a dork."

"Wonder where I could'a learned that."

"Probably from Steve."

He cocked his head. "Damn, you're right." A pause. "Hey, doll?"

"Yes handsome?"

His hand tightened on hers. "Don't go off alone again without telling someone first. Please."

She let out a breath and her nose bumped against his. "I promise you, I've learned my lesson. I never want to get a talking-to like that from Steve ever again."

"Oh I see, it's _Steve _you're worried about. Not me, or your brother–"

"Well duh, have you seen his disappointed face?"

"… You've got a point. He got better at that since 1944."

* * *

When Tony ended up in his workshop, still in his underarmor and sporting a wicked headache, Rhodey was waiting for him.

Tony took one look at his friend and sighed before heading to his workbench. He threw himself down on his swivel chair and did a few spins, just because, then rolled his shoulders back.

"Alright, let's hear it," he muttered.

Rhodey had crossed his arms, but he didn't look pissed. "Do you really think Barnes would put Maggie in danger?"

Tony bit back his initial snappy reaction, and closed his eyes. He thought about how Maggie and Barnes were with each other, how they moved as one at the first hint of trouble, how they always found each other at the end of each mission. He replayed, in painful detail, a moment from a mission a few weeks back: they'd all been standing around after the end of the fighting when a bomb went off right at their backs. Tony's suit had automatically slid over his body, but not before he saw Barnes throw an arm around Maggie and use his body to shield her. It had been too quick for thought, and Tony knew that those actions were pure reaction – his body's deepest instinct was to protect Maggie.

Tony sighed. "No."

"So why'd you say that?" Rhodey rested his exo-suit covered hip against the workbench.

"I don't know." _Because I was scared. _"I guess…" his face hardened. "I don't trust him."

Rhodey cocked his head. "Do you even know him?"

Tony opened his mouth, and then shut it.

He _thought _he did. He knew all the big, painful moments of Barnes' life: he knew about his service during the war, about his fall and his lost arm. Thanks to the leaked HYDRA files he knew all the intricate details of the tortures Barnes had suffered. He knew the makeup of his metal arm, knew what Barnes had done to the Stark family and knew the stories Maggie had told about their time on the run. And yet. _Do you even know him?_

Tony blinked. He didn't think he'd had a conversation with Barnes that had lasted longer than ten words. They didn't even spend very long together in the same room, if they could help it. What did that make them, if they knew everything about each other and yet hadn't spoken?

_Strangers, _his mind answered.

Rhodey took in Tony's wide, darting eyes, and reached over to pat his shoulder. "Just something to think about."

* * *

Maggie and Tony reconciled the next day. Instead of a heartfelt mutual apology and conversation, Maggie strode into the workshop, tossed a banana at Tony's head, and then they both launched into an argument about the merits of mechanical versus electrical engineering. Right away, they were back to normal.

Things were tense around the facility for a few days, but when it became clear that Tony and Bucky weren't about to start waging war in the corridors everyone settled down. They were prickly in each other's presence and stopped greeting one another, but it seemed they'd mutually decided that ignoring each other was the best way to move forward.

Maggie and Steve traded the occasional despairing look, but otherwise no one acknowledged the new baseline.

* * *

Tony had decided to channel his frustration and confusion into helping the Avengers analysts track the Serpents. It turned out the Serpents had another base, and their main forces were still carrying out asshole deeds in the name of HYDRA. Normally Tony didn't get too involved with the analyst side of things – he had F.R.I.D.A.Y. for that, and this was more Maggie's area, but he needed brain work and the Serpents provided the perfect target.

So he was in the operations room when Maggie stiffened at her station, stared at her holoscreen for a few seconds, then sighed. "I found them."

His head jerked up. "What?"

She gestured at her screen. "I found the base. And I'm telling you all instead of going to take care of this by myself." She chewed her lip. "Though even I might struggle with this one alone. Look, the satellite can't pick up any data about their base – they must have lined it with lead or something."

Tony came up to stand beside her and dropped a hand on her shoulder. "Look at you, becoming a team player."

She slapped his hand away. "Like you can talk. C'mon, let's go tell the others."

* * *

After a lengthy briefing and a short Quinjet ride to the Serpents' base in a Michigan, the Avengers found themselves in the midst of a raging battle. The base was a sprawling concrete and metal structure, low to the ground, in an industrial district. It didn't look like much from the air, but the instant the Avengers approached the base it went into override, with agents swarming out armed with all kinds of misappropriated alien weaponry and machinery-frazzling projectiles. The Serpents even had a few old HYDRA Quinjets, which buzzed through the air after the flying Avengers.

Tony was happily rocketing across the Serpents forces, peppering them with repulsor blasts, when Wilson called over the comms: "Barnes? Dammit, Barnes, check in."

Silence.

"What was his last position?" Steve grit out. Tony could see him out of the corner of his eye, trying to barrel through a twenty-strong group of Serpents armed with anti-tank weapons.

"He'd circled around to the northeast corner," Sam replied. "Said he could see some kind of entrance to the base. I lost visuals though, and… yep, his tracker's gone off."

"I'm pinned down," came Maggie's terse voice, and Tony looked over to her position – she'd been grounded by a ground-to-air projectile, and after unsnaring herself from the wire mesh of the projectile she was now plowing her way through Serpents agents. She'd kept her response short, but Tony could hear her panic in her carefully calm voice and the way she devastated the Serpents around her. Her report hadn't even been strictly necessary, but everyone on the team knew what it meant: _I can't get to him._

"Is anyone near the northeast corner?" Steve called.

Tony checked his position. "Yours truly," he said, only a little begrudgingly. "I'll check it out."

He flicked his hands and shot down to the last place Barnes' tracker had let out a signal: a narrow alley leading up to what they thought was the outer edge of one of the Serpents' buildings – a squat, concrete building with no windows. Tony landed in the alley, kicking up dust, and scanned his surroundings. The Serpent building resisted his scanners (Maggie was right about them using some kind of cloaking material), but there was a rusty green metal door set in the wall facing the alley.

Tony rolled his eyes and strode toward the door, his metal boots clanking on the ground. Barnes, for some reason, had thought that going into the Serpent base with no backup and no comms was a good idea. And now, joy of joys, it had fallen to Tony to make sure the idiot wasn't dead.

Tony was formulating a scathing one-liner to offer Barnes when he found him as he laid one gauntleted hand on the green door to rip it away from the wall. But the moment he touched the rusty metal there was a blinding blue light, a concussive _boom_, and the ground swallowed him whole.

* * *

Tony opened his eyes to the feeling of _cold _pressed against his back. For a few moments he frowned upward: above him stretched a ceiling of metal, pipes, and wires, barely visible in the dim lighting provided by small fluorescent bulbs along the walls. It reminded him of an abandoned train tunnel.

He lurched upward, groaning as his head reeled at the movement, and reached down to push himself to his feet. He flinched when he felt cool concrete under his palm. His _bare _palm. He glanced down but the reassuring red and gold metal armor was missing – he was left in just his grey underarmor outfit, sitting in a dark underground tunnel.

"Shit." He shot to his feet and glanced around wildly.

Good news: his armor wasn't missing.

Bad news: It was deactivated.

The Iron Man lay on its back a few paces away, the arc reactor and eye slits dark. Its metal limbs sprawled lifelessly on the concrete ground. Tony shivered at the image, then blinked a few times to get his brain in gear.

_Right. _He'd programmed the armor to eject him if it was ever deactivated by an EMP, after that time Emil Tessler had trapped him inside the armor and dropped a building on him. He could get it working, given enough time, but… a _boom _went off somewhere in the distance, and dust shivered down from the ceiling.

Tony looked up and eyed his surroundings. Machinery lined the whole tunnel ceiling: hinges, gears, wires… he took a few moments to trace the logic of it all, then mentally kicked himself. Of course: the alley had been a trap. The minute he applied pressure to that green door the machinery lying in wait beneath the alleyway had sprung into action; there'd obviously been some kind of alien-tech-reinforced EMP, powerful enough to knock out even the nanotech (man, he was going to figure that out when he got the chance), followed by a knock-out blast, and then the whole alley just – split down the middle and sucked the unwitting Avenger into the dank tunnel below. He had to admit, it was pretty damn smart_._

He checked his watch, but the EMP had fried that too. He had a sudden, horrible thought: if he'd still had the arc reactor keeping shrapnel out of his heart then he'd be in a lot of trouble after that EMP.

Tony circled, and noted that the tunnel he'd found himself in stretched outward and branched into more tunnels. Apparently he'd fallen like a rat into a maze. _Shit._

Another distant boom went off, and Tony remembered the battle raging above the surface. Who knew how long it would take for the rest of the Avengers to fall into the green-door trick, or some other Serpent trap. Maggie had been right to be worried.

He took a few steps towards his armor, but then tripped over… _shit, _over the outstretched leg of an unconscious man in dark Serpent armor. Tony yelped and hopped away from the man, then frowned. The Serpent was out cold, his arm twisted at an impossible angle and his temple bleeding. Were the Serpents falling for their own trap?

He looked up and spotted more bodies littered along the dark tunnel floor, some of them bloody. A whole team of Serpents. This trail of bodies led to a set of metal doors, which hung haphazardly on their hinges. Something or someone had wrenched those doors inwards.

_Barnes. _

Tony recreated the scenario in his mind – Barnes falls into the green door trap, lands in the middle of a waiting squad of Serpents, and fights his way into the warren of the Serpents base. Tony sighed, and relieved one of the crumpled Serpents of his semiautomatic.

No armor, no comms, no backup. Nothing but his underarmor, a pair of sneakers, and a stolen gun. He cast one longing look at his disabled armor. _I'll come back for you. _Then he walked through the broken metal doors, keeping his footsteps light like Maggie had taught him. He supposed he'd better find Barnes.

* * *

The bowels of the Serpent base were a freaking maze. Each dingy, poorly lit tunnel looked exactly like the last one, twisting and turning back on themselves. Tony knew he could find his way back to the green door trap thanks to his eidetic memory (not that he really wanted to) but anyone else would be so lost by now.

Because of the warren of intersecting corridors and tunnels, Tony had thought finding Barnes would be difficult. But it turned out all he had to do was follow the sound of gunfire.

He didn't come across any Serpent agents as he crept towards the echoing gunshots, shouts, and clanking metal. The corridor opened up into a low-ceilinged open space filled with metal support pillars; some kind of underground warehouse. It was filled with huge wooden packing crates, so Tony couldn't get a clear look at the whole space, but it was obvious from the loud echoes that the fight was happening in here. He crept forward and pressed his back against the nearest crate, straining to figure out where the enemy was. Dim orange lights gave the warehouse an eerie vibe.

"Surrender, _Soldat!_" cried a sharp voice. The echoes made it impossible to tell how far away the speaker was. "Surrender now, and we'll reprogram you rather than kill you for your treachery!"

Right. These guys were into HYDRA. Figures they'd be into the whole 'asset' thing as well.

After a few moments of silence, Barnes's voice rang out: "Kiss my ass." The words were followed by three ear-splitting gunshots and the _thud _of flesh hitting concrete. Tony's mouth quirked.

Gunfire rang out again, volleys of what sounded like machine gun fire, and Tony flinched when bullets sparked against the concrete to his right. He slipped sideways, flitting from crate to crate to try and get around the Serpents. His ears strained, picking up the sounds of heavy footsteps and shouts of "_over there!_" and "_fire!_" over the gunfire.

Crossing his fingers, Tony pulled himself up a pile of crates until he was hunched over on top of them, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. And finally he saw what was going on: bodies littered the warehouse but there were still about ten Serpent agents moving through the maze of packing crates, dressed in dark green tactical suits and armed to the teeth with guns and – _were those machine gun bayonets? _Tony dropped flat onto his crate so they wouldn't see him.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught a flash of metal and swung his gun up, heart in his mouth.

But it wasn't a Serpent agent. He'd caught a glimpse of Barnes, the orange light gleaming on his black and gold arm and his dark hair. But he'd slipped behind a packing crate before Tony could really register his presence; looked like he was planning to circle in front of the Serpents and ambush them. Smart. Tony wriggled forward, his gun up and ready to cover Barnes if he needed it.

But then Barnes slid around the packing crate, his back against the wood as he peeked around the corner, and Tony's eyes widened.

The hundred-year old veteran wasn't in good shape. He listed to the left as he stood against the crate, and blood seeped from a cut above his ear, coating the entire right side of his face. The tacky scarlet blood glinted sickly in the low light. Barnes had stolen a Serpent weapon as well and propped it awkwardly in his right hand because… it looked like he'd lost all control of his left arm. The metal limb hung like a deadweight from his left shoulder, and as Barnes ducked his head back from the edge of the crate the arm swung limply, uselessly. _The EMP._

"Oh boy, this isn't going to be good," Tony muttered to himself.

But he didn't have another second to freak out about just how unarmed (_ha_) he and Barnes were, because at that moment the team of Serpents streamed past Barnes's hiding spot.

Tony had thought that Barnes looked like a sorry sight, covered in blood with only one working arm, but that thought abruptly imploded the second Barnes fell on the Serpent agents.

He started with a spray of gunfire across the three agents at the back of the group, dropping them instantly. When the others turned and swung their guns up, he dove forward and rolled into the center of the group, twisting elegantly around the limp metal arm, then shot to his feet and landed a devastating headbutt to the nearest agent's face.

The _crunch _of the agent's skull breaking shook Tony out of his shock. He lifted his gun, aimed, and fired. Rhodey had always teased him for being terrible with actually aiming weapons, but his practice in the firing rage paid off: the agent furthest from Barnes went down with a strangled cry. The Serpents around him swung their guns away from Barnes and looked up in shock. But Barnes didn't react beyond continuing his assault on the remaining members of their team – Tony had a split second to wonder if Barnes had already known that Tony was up there, or if he'd processed the information in that lightning-fast way that the supersoldiers seemed to in the midst of battle.

Then Tony realized that the Serpents had spotted him lying on top of the pile of crates a few dozen feet away. And that he was in the direct line of fire. And that they'd pointed their guns at him.

"Gah!" He rolled sideways and tumbled off the side of the crate just as they opened fire, and winced at the sound of bullets ripping through wood. He landed on the next crate with a _thunk _and kept rolling, but the screaming bullets dogging his path had stopped. He looked up just in time to see the Serpents who'd been firing at him collapse to the concrete fall in a boneless heap, two of them bleeding from gunshot wounds and another two felled by well-placed kicks from Barnes.

But Barnes had turned to rescue Tony at the cost of putting the last two Serpent agents at his back. Tony's head jerked up, sweat in his eyes and fingers shaking on his gun, and he saw Barnes stagger forward, overbalance, and pitch forward onto the ground. Tony's mouth fell open. He'd never seen the super soldier be clumsy before, especially not in the midst of battle. But then his gaze fell to the three scarlet holes blooming on the back of Barnes's dark blue uniform.

Tony blinked, but then his attention was caught by the flash of green as the last two Serpent agents ran forward, their gleeful eyes on Barnes's reddening back.

"Oh hell no." Tony slid off the last crate to land light-footed on the warehouse floor, raised his gun, and fired two shots. The Serpents were dead before they hit the ground.

Tony ran to Barnes, who had thankfully not died but was in the process of trying to sit up while only having one functioning arm and three bullets somewhere in his upper chest. Tony helped pull him to a sitting position and was rewarded with a long groan.

"Crap," Tony said, taking in Barnes's bloody uniform. There were no exit wounds on the front of Barnes's chest, which Tony was reasonably sure wasn't good _(but what the hell do I_ _know_), and the wounds in his back soaked his uniform with blood. They wounds were centered around his right shoulder, and Tony didn't think the blood flow was heavy enough to mean that any major arteries were bleeding out.

"Damn it all to hell," Barnes growled, and reached over his shoulder. When his finger brushed one of the bullet wounds he hissed and pulled his hand back, taking purposefully long breaths through his nose. Ignoring the blood on his fingers, he checked his gun's magazine and eyed the fallen Serpent agents for signs of life. His eyes narrowed at the two who'd shot him, then he looked to Tony. "Thanks."

Another distant explosion made the ceiling shudder. The sound of voices echoed into the warehouse from the corridor Tony had entered by, and both his and Barnes's heads snapped in that direction.

"C'mon Barnes, we've got to move," Tony said, pulling at Barnes's flesh arm. "If you die I'll never hear the end of it."

Barnes groaned, but staggered to his feet under Tony's guidance. "You're a charmer, Stark."

"Don't get too charmed, I know you can't resist our Stark ways." Tony winced mentally. _Why did I say that_? He blustered through it by speed-walking to the other end of the workshop, flapping his hands at Barnes to get him to move faster. Barnes, for his part, seemed reasonably mobile despite the three new holes he'd gained.

They slipped into a new corridor, heading in the general direction of what Tony thought was the other side of the Serpent base. The fighting had been heaviest over there, so hopefully they could find an exit from this subterranean maze or run into some other Avengers. The grimy, dimly lit corridors stretched ahead and around them.

"EMP get your suit?" Barnes asked.

"Sure did. _And _my watch." Tony waved the stopped watch under Barnes's nose. "It's a Patek Phillipe, Pepper gave it to me for my birthday."

"Bastards," Barnes replied. He rolled his shoulder to keep the butt of his gun propped up, and winced.

Tony eyed him, not-so-subtly taking in the growing red stain between his shoulders. He wanted to stop and put pressure on the wound, but if they stopped moving now they'd die. "How, uh… how're you doing there?"

Barnes had so far not really looked at him, instead eyeing every exit and angle for enemies, but at that question he looked across at Tony and shot him the most scathing _are you kidding me_ look that Tony had seen in a long time.

"Right." Tony shook his head. "Got shot three times. Probably not great."

"I'll live," Barnes replied. "Probably. The bullets didn't hit my heart or lungs, but other than that… I don't know. I've probably got about five minutes before the blood loss gets to me."

"A lot of experience with gunshots, huh?"

"You could say that." Barnes held up his gun hand to stop Tony as they approached an intersection, then poked his head out to check that the coast was clear. His metal arm dangled uselessly by his side. After a second he turned back and nodded for Tony to continue.

"Shouldn't I be doing that?" Tony mused.

Barnes looked at him out of the corner of his eye. "No offense, but you look like you're more used to doing this kind of thing in an indestructible metal suit. I might be… not at full capacity, but I know how to do this."

"Not at full capacity?" Tony repeated incredulously, but then shook his head. "Never mind. Like you said, we've got five minutes until you pop your clogs, so let's strategize." They paused so Barnes could clear another intersection. He held up his gun hand again, and the hairs on the back of Tony's neck prickled when he heard distant voices.

"… en route to southeast exit, we've got a breach…" Tony picked up the words as the speaker's voice grew suddenly loud and then quiet again, along with the sound of running boots. They must have been traveling down a parallel corridor not far from Tony and Barnes.

Barnes waited a few more moments, then nodded to Tony and got moving again. The sounds of fighting above the surface were louder now.

"Strategy," Barnes murmured. "Neither of us is going to be much help fighting down here, so the strategy is to get back to the surface and behind friendly lines."

"Makes sense," Tony muttered back, his knuckles white around his stolen gun. A bare hanging light bulb ahead of them flickered, as if the set dresser from every horror movie ever had been through this way. "And sounds like there's a southeast exit we can use. That's… that way." He pointed, and Barnes raised an eyebrow at him. "Why is everyone so surprised by my brilliant sense of direction?"

Barnes just rolled his eyes, and they veered down a new corridor towards the southeast. As they paced down the narrow, dark corridors, Tony reflected that he was glad he'd found Barnes – he felt so _exposed _like this, just fabric and skin when he was surrounded by danger. It reminded him of fending for himself in a cave in Afghanistan, just narrowly escaping death by the skin of his teeth. The last time he'd fought without the armor had been…

His eyes flicked to Barnes. The last time he'd fought without the armor Barnes had tried to shoot him in the face.

But he'd felt an unconscious sense of relief when he spotted Barnes back in that warehouse, regardless of how bloody and beaten up he looked. Now, Barnes took the lead in their tense journey through the bowels of the Serpent base, his left shoulder angled forward and his gun held steady in his right hand. His dark hair dangled in his face and sweat prickled his forehead. Tony paced a few steps behind him, trying to remember everything he'd bothered to learn about carrying a gun.

Barnes's shoulders were tense, and every now and then Tony heard a near-silent hiss as he jostled his wounds, but otherwise he showed no sign of his pain. And though Tony had never actually been shot before, he remembered what it felt like to have his chest blasted full of shrapnel. He didn't envy Barnes.

They heard approaching footsteps and ducked into a shadowy alcove. A whole team of Serpents ran past, shouting amongst themselves about the Avengers, and Tony opened his mouth to whisper to Barnes that they should ambush them. But when he looked over at Barnes leaning against the wall, his mouth snapped shut.

Barnes's muscles were coiled and his eyes were fixed on the running Serpents, but every line of his body was taut with pain. The color had drained from his face and his jaw was clenched, and there was a glassy sheen in his eyes that Tony didn't like the look of. Tony's eyes dropped to Barnes's gun hand, which had started to shake.

Half a minute later, Barnes made a nonverbal grunt and stepped back into the corridor. It seemed to take an immense effort.

Tony considered telling him to stop, to lie down, but they both knew that wasn't an option. Barnes didn't need Tony telling him things he already knew. So Tony just followed.

Barnes's boot scuffed against the concrete, a rare display of inattention, and Tony realized that the feeling coiling in his gut was panic. Not that Barnes would get them discovered, or that Tony's backup was bleeding out, but because Barnes was hurt. Tony was _worried._

"So I don't think I hate you anymore," he said conversationally as they strode down the tunnel. Barnes's cheek twitched. "It's more… you annoy the _shit _out of me. Because you've been through terrible things so I should feel sorry for you, right?"

"I don't want you to feel sorry for me-"

"Whatever, I should empathize. But your body and your face took my whole family from me, and what's more you're _dating _my _sister. _I just…" Tony sighed, and sped-walk ahead of Barnes so he could check the next intersection. Barnes didn't protest. "I once told Maggie that this whole thing was a moral minefield, and I was tired of tiptoeing through it."

"You don't seem like the kind of guy who tiptoes," Barnes murmured.

"Huh. Guess you're right."

Barnes took the lead again, and Tony's eyes darted over the dark stain on his back. The sounds of fighting grew closer.

After a little while, Barnes spoke again. "Sometimes I look at you and I feel my arm getting blown off all over again."

Tony blinked, then winced, then eyed the metal arm. He'd analysed the one he'd taken back from Siberia, he knew that there were cybernetic neurons and sensors intricately woven through it – not as sensitive as Maggie's wings, but Barnes would've felt pain when Tony blew his arm off.

For a moment Tony swallowed down a succession of instinctive words. But then he sighed, and said: "I'm sorry."

Barnes's eyes shot wide. "I dunno if you're the one who should be apologizing, pal."

"Me either, but I feel like I should. For that." He nodded at the limp arm and shrugged. They turned a corner and the ceiling rumbled. Tony thought he heard the Hulk's roar. _We could use you down here, buddy_.

Barnes shook his head. "No, wait. I… I never apologized. To you." He stopped walking and looked at Tony with serious grey eyes.

"We don't have time for this Barnes, I don't know if you noticed but we're in the middle of a–"

"Surroundings are clear," Barnes interrupted. He shifted his weight and his eyes closed for a second, his face flashing with pain.

"Barnes…"

"Tony – I'm sorry." His eyes opened, and Tony felt stunned at the earnestness there. "I'm sorry for… for killing Howard. And I'm sorry for killing Maria." Tony flinched at the name; he'd expected to hear _your mother_. "I'm sorry for taking Maggie away from you." Barnes took a ragged breath.

Distantly, Tony thought: _he's in pain and he doesn't think he's going to make it out. I should stop this. _

"I'm sorry that Maggie and I didn't come home to you and Steve when we broke away from HYDRA; we were trying to keep you safe. And I'm sorry that I came between you and… and your family." He swallowed shakily. "I'm sorry you had to see your parents die like that. I was going to tell you."

"You were?"

"The moment I saw you and Maggie walk into that base together, I knew she wasn't going to run from you anymore. So I planned to tell you the truth after we squared things at the base and… and to leave it to you to decide what happened to me. But then… well, I didn't get the chance." Barnes blew out a breath and shook his head. "Sorry I didn't say all this sooner."

Tony stared. "You know, you're talkative when you want to be."

But that was the wrong thing to say. Barnes stiffened and turned away with hunched shoulders, then continued walking down the corridor, trudging now. And Tony realized that Barnes really wasn't used to him at all. He didn't know how to tell the difference between a joke made out of spite and a joke that meant… something else. Before he could open his mouth to explain, a blast resounded from somewhere ahead of them, much louder than the last explosions.

Barnes and Tony both flinched back then stiffened at the clear sounds of fighting, followed by the gut-clenching roar of the Hulk. They started forwards, but seconds later there was an even _louder _explosion. The sound of this one clapped off the stone walls and rattled Tony's brain, and he flinched as a plume of dust blew down the corridor towards them. Somewhere up ahead he heard crunching concrete and shrieking metal. The floor shuddered under his feet.

When the dust had settled some and it didn't look like the ceiling was going to collapse on them, Tony unwrapped his arms from around his head and glanced at Barnes. The supersoldier's head was ducked between his shoulders and his eyes were wide as he looked back at Tony.

"Keep going?" Tony suggested.

Barnes nodded. They jogged down the corridor, now trailing a smattering of blood droplets, until they stepped through a set of open metal doors into what looked like another wide warehouse space. Only this one had been blown to pieces.

Tony could barely make out the shape of the room past the rubble and the smoke and dust in the air. Half the ceiling had caved in, and limbs poked out from under blocks of concrete and metal. At the other end of the long room a faint shaft of daylight pierced the gloom.

"Bet you anything this used to be the southeast exit," Tony muttered.

They started forward, but skidded to a halt when they heard a shout and saw the shapes of Serpent agents stumbling out of the settling dust.

The one at the front froze, then shouted: "Avengers sighted! Open fire!"

Tony and Bucky dove in opposite directions, tumbling behind mounds of rubble as the Serpents fired potshots after them. Tony rolled and lifted his gun but then five measured, louder shots rang out, and the Serpents fell silent.

Tony poked his head above his rubble cover. Sure enough the Serpents had hit the deck. His head swiveled, and he spotted the dark shape of Barnes a few yards away with a gun in his outstretched flesh hand.

"Nice," Tony called. He jumped to his feet and dusted off his trousers.

"There'll be more of them," Barnes muttered, his gun hand lowering. He took a step, wobbled, and then slumped to the ground.

"Barnes!" Tony ran over to the fallen Avenger and rolled him over – Barnes eyes were open but clouded with pain, and he'd barely kept his grip on his gun. "C'mon, Barnes, let's…" he looked up and glanced around wildly. "Okay, sit over here." Tony half guided, half dragged Barnes toward a nearby flat slab of concrete sticking vertically out of the ground, and the metal arm dragged in the dirt. He pushed Barnes's back against the concrete. "You press your back against that, Barnes, keep pressure on those wounds. If you die that will be a massive inconvenience for me."

Barnes snorted, then groaned. He pressed his eyes shut and clenched his fist. "I'm not gonna die, Stark. No way I'm letting some wannabe HYDRA assholes knock me off."

"That's the spirit, stay alive on the power of spite."

"S'worked for me so far."

Tony laughed, even as his eyes tracked anxiously over Barnes's screwed-up face. Then he heard heavy boots and shouts from the direction of the daylight he'd seen. "Oh right. Wannabe HYDRA assholes. You stay here, tin man."

"No, wait–"

But Tony was already running away at a crouch, darting from rubble mound to rubble mound, his sweaty hands wrapped around his gun. He resisted a nervous impulse to hum the _M__ission Impossible_ theme under his breath, and circled around the source of the noises.

He came across the first agent by accident. They ran into each other when they both sidled around a fallen pylon, and blinked at each other in surprise. Tony recovered first: he pistol whipped the agent upside the head and watched him crumple, before hopping over his body and creeping towards the next set of heavy footsteps.

For the next two and a half minutes he picked his way through the rubble, picking off Serpents one by one. He strained to recall everything Rhodey had ever taught him about handling guns, and all the times Maggie had tried to teach him about being sneaky. Maybe Steve was right when he suggested that Tony should train more without the armor (not that Tony would ever admit that in a zillion years). He let off a few shots, but the room was so full of debris that no one could identify his location.

There was dust in his eyes, his throat. He could barely see in the dark, dusty room, and his nose was clogged with the smell of ash, blood, and gunpowder. He relied on the element of surprise as he slipped after the Serpents – most of them never saw him coming. Who expected Tony Stark to come after them without the armor?

At one point he got so close to the exit that he could see the sky: the shaft of sunlight streamed in through a jagged hole in the ceiling, a sweet promise of clean air and blue sky with a pile of rubble stretching up to it. It would be a mission to climb up the rubble and squeeze through the hole, but the fresh air wafting down was tantalizing. Tony thought about going up and getting backup, but… his gaze turned back to the room of smoking rubble. He couldn't leave Barnes.

So he circled back, coming up behind one Serpent and clonking him on the head with a brick. Two more rounded a pile of rubble and Tony shot them both before they could give away his position.

He'd almost circled all the way back to where he thought he left Barnes when he heard an intake of breath from behind him. He spun around and used the last round in his gun to take out the Serpent pointing a rifle at him.

"How many more of you weirdos are there?" he hissed under his breath as he turned back around.

As it turned out, the answer was _one. _Tony turned around, an empty gun in his right hand and dead men's blood on his left, to see a single Serpent agent sneering at him from the top of a pile of shattered concrete. His gun, a long dark rifle that glinted in the low light, lifted until Tony could see right into the black eye of the barrel. Tony couldn't see the agent's eyes because of the dark goggles that all the Serpents wore, but he easily saw the sneer that lifted his lips.

Tony's hands lifted of their own accord, as if the instinctive _I surrender _movement might save his life. His body felt like it had been doused in ice water. He should have been thinking of something to say or something he could do to stop the agent squeezing the trigger, but he only saw faces: Pepper. Maggie. Rhodey. Peter.

The Serpent's smirk tightened and his hands shifted – but then there was a flash of black metal, a dull _clunk_, and the guy crumpled to the ground.

For five silent seconds Tony stood frozen with his hands in the air, staring at the space where the Serpent's gun barrel had been. Then he blinked at the fallen Serpent, out cold where he'd fallen halfway down the pile of debris. Slowly, his eyes tracked from the crumpled guy to the projectile that had taken him down.

"Barnes," Tony croaked. "Did you just throw your arm at this man?"

In response, he got a groan and a wet-sounding cough. Tony followed the sound and spotted Barnes half-slumped at the base of another pile of concrete, lying on his front with his torso propped up by his right arm. He must have crawled from his hiding spot. His metal arm – which was apparently detachable – lay a few feet away from the fallen Serpent agent, but there was still a sliver of metal at his left shoulder joint. Barnes looked up through his tangled hair and their eyes met.

Barnes coughed again. "Looked like you needed a hand."

"A… hand," Tony repeated weakly. For another second they just stared at each other.

Then Tony burst into laughter. The sound was high and hysterical, and after a moment Barnes joined in. Their laughter echoed across the rubble of the blown-up underground room, over the unconscious Serpent agent and Barnes's detached metal arm. After a few moments Barnes's low, pained chuckles spurred Tony to stumble toward him and help haul him to his feet. Barnes groaned between his teeth but didn't stop laughing.

"Let's get you out of here, funny man," Tony said, still sniggering. Barnes slumped most of his weight on him – damn, he was heavy – so Tony wrapped his remaining arm over his shoulders, then slung his own arm around Barnes's waist. They staggered back the way Tony had come. As they approached the fallen Vibranium arm Tony scooped it up and tucked it under his free arm, making Barnes snort with laughter again.

They limped their way back to the jagged hole in the ceiling, giggling helplessly, covered in dust, sweat, and blood. Barnes staggered the whole way there, but Tony didn't let him fall. When they reached the pile of rubble Tony kept a firm grip around Barnes and a keen eye on the steadiest footholds. With much slipping and swearing through gritted teeth, Tony brought Bucky Barnes up into the sunlight.

* * *

Maggie found them first.

They rounded an exploded building just as she dropped out of the sky with her wings flared and her engines roaring. She looked up, took one look at the two of them staggering together through the battlezone, and burst into tears.

It was weird, because she kept working through the tears. She helped carry Barnes to the waiting medics, coordinated with the rest of the team over comms, and checked Tony over for injuries, but she did it all through a steady stream of tears. Tony, exhausted from his trek through the maze of tunnels and from basically pulling Barnes up a treacherous pile of concrete, couldn't do much other than watch her work with a kind of awed fascination. The battle was mostly over so the rest of the Avengers soon arrived, full of frantic concern for him and Barnes. Rhodey had found his armor at the bottom of the trap and nearly lost his mind with worry.

In the Quinjet on the way back, with Barnes being fussed over by the medics ("he'll be alright once he gets in the Cradle, that supersoldier serum is tough stuff"), Tony wrapped his arm around Maggie's side and squeezed her.

"Are you alright, Mags?"

"Am _I _alright? You're the ones who–" her voice hitched, and she resolutely cut herself off. He could see echoes of fear and horror in her eyes; she'd lost both of them, they'd gone completely off the comms and vanished. Tony could hardly imagine how she'd felt.

He rubbed her arm. "We came back, Maggie."

She swallowed, and turned to look him in the eyes. "Together."

A long moment passed. Tony looked to his left, at Barnes lying sedated and bloody on a fixed stretcher. They hadn't reattached his metal arm yet (it was tucked safely under Tony's seat), and he looked oddly small without it. His face was relaxed in his sleep, with his mouth slightly parted and his hair strewn across the pale fabric of the stretcher.

Tony looked back at his sister's worry-etched face. "Yeah," he murmured. "Together."

* * *

Two days later, Tony used F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s help to get Barnes alone.

He'd been in the medical wing all day yesterday, letting the Cradle work its wonders, and what with Maggie and Steve fussing over him Tony hadn't gone to visit. Last night he got discharged, and thanks to his A.I.'s help (spying) Tony knew that this morning he was in the common room. F.R.I.D.A.Y. drew Maggie away by manufacturing a meeting with the Avengers analysts, and everyone else was resting.

So when Tony breezed into the common room Barnes was sitting alone on one of the soft leather couches, frowning at the TV. He wore sweatpants and a loose green shirt, with the tell-tale lump of bandages around his right shoulder, and his hair was tied up in a bun that looked like someone else (Maggie) had done it. Someone (probably Maggie) had got his metal arm working again and reattached it.

Barnes looked up, spotted Tony, and stilled. He seemed kind of tense, but that could have just been the healing holes in his back.

Tony cleared his throat. "How're you doing, Barnes?"

"Sore," he replied, his eyes focused. "But I've been worse."

"I know."

There was a long silence. Tony paced idly, collecting his thoughts as he gazed about the room.

After too long a pause to be considered natural, Tony clapped his hands together. Barnes jumped.

"Okay, so I feel like a shovel talk is kind of unnecessary here since we both know I could kick your ass" – Barnes's eyebrow cocked but he didn't say anything – "_but _aside from all the other reasons I had to dislike you, I guess… I worry about Maggie. Always have. So you worry me. But…" he shrugged, and gestured at Barnes. "You seem like an alright guy, all things considered."

Barnes frowned for a few moments before replying carefully: "For what it's worth, everything Meg's told me about you has made me like you. Meeting you in person was kind of a shock to the senses, but I never wanted to…" his mouth twisted.

"Be my mortal enemy?" Tony suggested.

"Yeah, that."

"Alright then," Tony said in a decisive voice. "And the 'shock to the sense' thing? That's not just you."

"Oh." Barnes scratched his head with his flesh hand. "So are we… are we good?"

"Are we _good_?" Tony repeated in a highly-offended tone. Barnes looked aggrieved, so Tony snorted and let him off the hook. "I'm just messing with you Barnes, you always take me so seriously. Yes, we're good. I might… I might not always be good with you, but it's not you. It's just. You know. Images."

Barnes's eyes darkened. Oh, he knew.

Tony shook off his gloom like a duck shaking off water. "But it isn't your fault, so I'll get through it. So you and I are _good. _I don't have the attention span to have an arch nemesis anyway, so you'll have to settle for being my…"

Barnes's eyebrows hiked throughout this speech. The word hung between them: _friend. _But even Tony knew they didn't know each other well enough for that yet, so he finished with:

"Co-habiting, co-working, semi-decent acquaintance with many mutual friends."

"Sounds kinda wordy."

"What are you, my editor? Get off my back, Barnes."

Barnes rolled his eyes, but he was relaxed in a way that Tony had never seen him – at least, not when Barnes was aware that Tony was in the room. It was as if he'd dropped some level of suspicion, or wariness. Or maybe he was just like this with everyone he'd shared a few near-death experiences with. Either way, the lack of tension helped ease the knot in Tony's gut that remembered a bloody, frozen battle in Siberia.

Tony put his hands on his hips. "Now you know about condoms, right? And STDs?"

Barnes's relaxation instantly vanished as he instinctively flinched, and then winced as he pulled his wounds.

Tony continued: "Because I know Maggie's read up on everything under the sun, but you were born like a million years ago–"

Barnes held up the metal hand pleadingly. "Yes, I've been educated, you don't have to worry. Jesus."

"You can just call me Tony."

Barnes's alarmed expression morphed into another eye roll. "You know, it's Meg's birthday soon."

Tony cocked his head. "So it is. You got any ideas?"

"I might."

Tony had already been thinking up guest lists and grand performances that would no doubt embarrass and charm her, but now he reluctantly realized that Barnes might have some insight into what Maggie wanted that Tony didn't. He sighed. "Alright then. Let's hear your terrible ideas."

It was still a little weird, this thing between them, but Tony was quickly coming to the realization that _most _people's relationships with their siblings' partners were some level of weird. And this… this wasn't bad.

He sighed, and sat down on the couch beside Bucky Barnes.

* * *

**A/N: In the next one shot, many Avengers get drunk. But they've got a very good reason to do so.**

* * *

**Reviews**

**Guest: Sorry to sucker punch you in the heart, but I'm really glad you enjoyed the chapter angst and all. The Tony, Bucky, Steve dynamic is really interesting and it's been fun to explore it, but I can't wait to see how that turns out in canon. Hope you enjoyed the resolution to the three-parter :) Thanks for reading and reviewing.**

**Red Vixen: Um! I am so touched by your lovely review, it's an honor that my writing could make anyone feel that way. Hopefully this was a nice ray of sunshine for you :)**

**The1975Love: I'm glad you liked the unfolding drama! I agree that Maggie made a bad call, she's still getting used to being in a team. As for a sitdown and talk, as you will see that's not quite how it happened but I hoped you enjoyed it anyway :)**


	8. Pepper and Tony (Part One)

**Pepper and Tony (Part One)**

"Package arrival ETA two minutes."

"Confirm."

"Drop-zone status?"

"Sightlines and airspace clear, everyone's in position."

"Confirm. Over and out."

Maggie tapped the commlink in her ear and turned away from the rooftop edge.

"Maggot, what are you doing? You've gotta stand over here, we've been over this."

She looked up and smiled sheepishly at Tony, who stood to the right of a foliage arc at the center of the rooftop, dressed in a sharp tux with a lily clipped into his lapel. She unconsciously reached up to touch the lily in the lapel of her own blazer and called: "Nothing!"

Tony rolled his eyes and turned to Rhodey, whose exosuit fitted cleanly over his own dark suit. "Did that sound believable to you?"

"Definitely not," Rhodey deadpanned.

A grey-haired woman in judge's robes standing under the foliage arc cleared her throat. "Is there a problem?"

"Nope, my sister is just being sneaky," Tony replied. He turned back just as Maggie took her place beside Rhodey, and narrowed his eyes. "Wait, I know what this is! You're secretly running your own security, aren't you?"

Maggie just raised her eyebrows.

"Maggie, I specifically hired the number one private security firm in the _world _so none of the actual guests would have to be on the job–"

"I know, I know, but I promise I'm not distracted! It's just Natasha and I, no one else is involved. I'm sorry."

"Oh it's not just you," Rhodey said. "I'm pretty sure Sam and Clint have been running their own background checks on everyone, I heard them talking about one of the ushers' credit score."

Tony pinched his nose. "Are you guys serious."

Maggie grinned and reached across Rhodey to knock her knuckles against Tony's shoulder. "C'mon, Tony, are you really surprised? You're surrounded by a bunch of the most protective people in the world, of course we want to make sure your big day goes perfectly." He looked up at her with a despairing look. "Now my inside agent tells me the package is T-minus one minute from arrival, so you better start looking less annoyed."

"Maggie, you can't just call Pepper _the package_."

"Her codename is Turtledove, would you prefer that?"

Tony scowled at her for a second longer, but then the smile he'd been hiding broke through and spread across his face. Maggie returned the warm smile. Tony had been like this all morning, always seconds away from a big dopey grin and a laugh. It suited him.

_Maybe he should get married every day. _

Maggie stepped back into position, straightened her shoulders and looked around. Pepper and Tony had chosen to have their ceremony on a rooftop in Tribeca, with a stunning view of Manhattan. Simple white chairs lined the pavestones, dotted with greenery and bouquets of lilies which rustled in the warm early summer breeze that wafted over the rooftop. At the end of the aisle stood a green foliage arc, beside which stood Tony, Rhodey, the officiant, and Maggie.

Rhodey, of course, was Tony's best man. Tony had just assumed that would be the case and gone ahead with his plans until Rhodey had reminded him that he actually had to ask first.

* * *

A few days after Rhodey had demanded Tony ask him to be his best man, Tony and Maggie were in the middle of a session in the workshop, trying to increase the Iron Man armor's resistance to EMPs.

In the middle of their work, Tony turned to Maggie. "Hey, Maggot."

"Mm?"

"Do you want to be a grooms-person."

She frowned at him. "I don't know what that is."

"Like a groomsman! But a woman. I'm making the term gender neutral, it's the twenty first century already. And I'm an innovator."

Maggie set down her tools. "You want me to be… a grooms-person?"

"Yes. In my wedding, if that wasn't clear."

"I thought it was normally men?"

"Normally, but we've never been very normal, have we?" he shrugged. "And I'm not surrendering you to Pepper's side of the ceremony, she can find her own people. She already stole Happy from me."

"What about Bruce?"

"I did ask if he wanted to be a groomsperson, but he wants to take a back seat. Something about how he thinks being a part of my wedding might be stressful."

Maggie leaned back in her stool, turning over the surprising request. She honestly hadn't expected to be asked. Hell, not too long ago she'd thought she wouldn't be able to make it to her brother's wedding at all because she'd be in prison. Being in the wedding party was a new thing altogether.

After a few moments of thought, while Tony waited surprisingly patiently, a smile spread across her face.

"Is that a yes? That looks like a yes."

She looked up. "Can I wear a suit?"

* * *

Standing on the rooftop in the summer sun, Maggie glanced down to smooth down her suit. It was the same shade of charcoal grey as Rhodey's (though hers was tailored to fit her body shape) and they both wore lilies in their lapels. She'd also opted for a pair of elegant black heels and finished off the look with soft makeup and curled hair.

But as sharp as she and Rhodey looked, they were just backup for Tony; and he looked like he was right in his element, nodding to the assembled guests as he stood in his sharp black tux. His nanotech arc reactor was hidden under his dress shirt, but he'd been expressly forbidden from wearing the armor at any point during the day. Maggie followed Tony's gaze to his guests.

Pepper and Tony had decided to have a private ceremony – it was taken for granted that at least some part of their wedding would have to be a big public affair, but that would come later in the day at the reception. For now, the only guests in attendance were friends and family. There were no 'sides' either – guests sat where they liked. This meant that Pepper's parents, who looked slightly overwhelmed by everything, were sitting in the front row beside Vision and Wanda, who both looked lovely. A few seats away sat Steve, Sam, and Bucky. Steve was having some kind of non-verbal conversation with Tony, laughter in his eyes, and to his left Sam and Bucky seemed to be squabbling over how much space there was between their seats. As if sensing Maggie's gaze, Bucky looked up and smiled.

He looked… really good. He'd chosen a dark blue suit with a tie that was somehow the exact same color as his eyes, he'd trimmed his beard to frame his jaw, and he'd pulled his hair into that half-up half-down style that made Maggie a bit crazy. She swallowed, and Bucky's eyes glinted. As Maggie had discovered many years ago, Bucky was an objectively attractive man. He usually spent most of his days in comfort, opting for soft shirts and trousers, with his hair some level of ruffled. So seeing him all dressed up and groomed like this was still new for Maggie.

Bucky's eyes tracked down, over Maggie's well-tailored suit and back up to her face, and a grin spread across his face. Maggie smirked back, but then resolutely looked away. She would _not _be caught blushing in her duties as a grooms-person.

A row behind Steve, Bucky, and Sam sat a truly odd group. Maggie's eye was naturally drawn to Thor: he'd come back to Earth specially for the wedding, arriving ina blast of rainbow light at the Avengers Facility yesterday. He'd been busy sorting things out at New Asgard, though he'd visited regularly – partly to discuss forming diplomatic connections with Earth governments, and partly to visit a certain astrophysicist (apparently surviving the imminent destruction of the universe had reshuffled priorities). He looked massive amongst the rest of the guests, even compared to Steve, and he stood out as a bright pop of color: he wore a bright red and silver Asgardian tunic that was almost dazzling in the sunlight. Jane Foster sat to his right, stunning in a silver dress that looked a little Asgardian, if Maggie guessed correctly. Beside her sat Darcy Lewis, who was still a little new to the superhero crowd: her eyes were wide behind her glasses as she stared at everyone.

Bruce sat on Thor's left, looking comically small next to the god. He actually looked very handsome in a tweed professorial suit, with a sleek purple dress shirt underneath. He was fiddling with his glasses as he facilitated a conversation between Thor and the two guests on his left: Peter and May Parker. Peter couldn't come to the reception, for secret identity reasons, but he'd come to the ceremony dressed in his best rental suit, excited to be a part of the day. He was wide-eyed as he spoke to Thor, and Maggie just knew from the look on his face that his mouth was running away from him. She smiled.

Clint and his family sat near Steve, Maria Hill chatted with Wong and Dr Strange, and Hope Van Dyne rubbed a lipstick mark off Scott Lang's cheek. A few other close friends that Pepper and Tony (mostly Pepper) had made over the years at Stark Industries sat in the spare seats, but mostly the group of guests was very small. And very powerful.

Though some of them seemed a little worse for wear: Maggie watched Sam reach up and rub his eyes as he yawned, and allowed herself a little smile. In retrospect they should have held the bachelorette and bachelor parties a few days before the wedding. But no one had anticipated that things would go quite the way they had.

* * *

"Alright, gentlemen – and lady – let's get this bachelor party started!"

Rhodey had somehow managed to find a limousine big enough to fit the male half of the Avengers plus Maggie. Still, it was a tight fit as they drove to New York. At the front of the limousine Tony took it upon himself to hand out whiskey tumblers to the "bachelors": Rhodey, Steve, Bruce, Vision, Sam, Clint, Thor, and Maggie. They were all smartly dressed for a night out. Tony had also invited Erik Selvig, but he'd enmeshed himself in some kind of genetic research (and the prospect of drinking with Thor had made the man look positively green). Maggie was squashed in between Thor (massive, talking loudly about 'odd mortal marital traditions) and Steve (almost as massive, politely trying to find out where they might be going).

Maggie didn't mind. This was the first wedding she'd ever attended and each new custom or tradition was endlessly fascinating: she couldn't wait to see what a bachelor party looked like, and as she understood it not many women got the opportunity. So she accepted her whiskey, settled in between the mountains of muscle and joined Thor in discussing Earth wedding customs. By the time they reached Manhattan she and Thor had asked no less than forty seven questions. The others didn't seem to mind. In fact they seemed amused by the joint curiosity from the alien god and the mortal super soldier, and everyone enjoyed Thor's retellings of Asgardian weddings he had been to. Almost every story seemed to end in tales of drunkenness and property damage – Maggie wasn't sure if this was an Asgardian custom or a Thor custom.

Steve continued to try to get Rhodey to explain what the night had in store for them. It seemed he shared the same (justified) concerns that the media and the world had about what Tony Stark's bachelor party might look like. Maggie laughed into her whiskey at Steve's polite anxiety. She was very aware of her brother's reputation thanks to the research she'd done about him while on the run, but the world hadn't quite caught on to the fact yet that Tony Stark wasn't the party animal playboy he used to be. He still enjoyed a party (if the blowout he was planning for the wedding reception was any indication) but he wasn't going to be trashing any hotel rooms any time soon.

"First bachelor location, two minutes away!" called Rhodey, and passed around the whiskey bottle. Steve went a little pale.

"Wait," said Clint, looking around at the collected heroes. "Where's Barnes?"

Everyone looked to where Maggie and Steve sat side by side. Maggie leaned back, thought better of it when she felt a little bit like she would disappear between Steve and Thor's mighty biceps, and propped her elbows on her knees. "He's with the bachelorette's party."

"Uh…"

She grinned. "Apparently it's weird to go on a bachelor or bachelorette party with someone you're dating."

Everyone turned to Tony and he put his hands up in surrender. "I didn't say that! I wanted Barnes to come."

"He didn't mind," Steve added with a smile. "He said he'd never been to a bachelorette party before and he wanted to see what all the fuss was about."

Sam leaned in. "Do you think they'll do all that stuff with the pink plastic penises that some bachelorette parties do?"

"They do _what _with penises?" said Thor and Maggie in unison.

* * *

When the nine sharply-dressed Avengers walked through a set of mahogany doors into a spacious dark-wood and blue-lit upscale bar, Maggie sensed Steve sigh a breath of relief beside her.

"Expecting strippers?" she asked bluntly, making him go bright red. Sam laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.

"I, uh–"

"Oh Steve," Tony said genially, stepping past and swanning his way across the bar. "If there were going to be strippers, I would _definitely _have been filming your reaction. But despite the fine work those ladies and gentlemen do, those days are behind me." Rhodey pointed out their private booth with a view of the city, and Tony waved them all in. "Besides, if anyone's stripping tonight it's going to be me!" he announced to their horror.

* * *

Over the course of the evening Rhodey led them on a surprisingly laid back bar crawl through New York City, going from penthouse bars to dives to casinos. For a couple of hours they played poker, laughing at each other's poker faces and betting anything except money (Maggie lost her favourite welding torch to Tony, and Tony lost a private jet to Clint). Thor got really into the whole thing after a few bars, and started calling the party a 'tavern conquest'. Bruce and Vision were sober, obviously, Sam and Clint were well on their way to drunk, and Rhodey wasn't close behind. As Sam started to tell colorful stories about Steve's hard-headedness in battle to _much _appreciation, Steve started to cast hopeful looks in Thor's direction. At the third such look, Thor let out a roaring laugh and said:

"Yes, my friend, I did bring my personal elixir. I'd forgotten how much you enjoyed it last time. Would you like some?"

Steve almost sagged in relief. "Yes, please. Oh wait… Maggie, you've, um… you've got the super soldier serum too, right?"

Perched at the bar they were currently drinking their way through, Maggie looked over. "Sure do. Wait – _wait_, is this…" her eyes widened as Thor pulled a small, engraved silver flask from his Asgardian tunic. "Tony told me about this," she breathed, and met Steve's eyes. "It's Asgardian liquor, right? It can get us drunk?"

Steve held out his drink for a splash of the disarmingly clear liquid and Thor nodded sagely to Maggie. "This was aged for a thousand years in the barrels built from the wreck of Brunhilde's fleet." His mouth quirked. "It will get you drunk."

She held out her beer.

The exchange had drawn the attention of the rest of the men, and Rhodey laughed. "Maggie's first ever time getting drunk? Now this I _have _to see."

"Excuse you," Maggie said primly as she sniffed her doctored drink. "This will not be my first time."

"But you've got the… the super soldier metabolism, right?" asked Clint. She nodded and took a long draw from her beer. "So unless you were getting drunk when you were _five_…?"

Maggie raised her eyebrows as a light, tingly sensation flooded through her limbs.

Tony cleared his throat. "Maggie is a Stark, gentlemen. When she wants to get drunk, there's no level of science nor genetically-altered physiology that can stop her." He held up his whiskey and Maggie toasted him with a smirk.

"How did you do it?" asked Bruce, pushing his glasses up his nose and leaning in.

Maggie downed the rest of her drink and blinked when her skin seemed to grow hotter, and her mind _fizzed_. "Well when it comes down to metabolism it's all about kidney function, right? So I synthesized this–"

"Nope!" called Rhodey. "I'm installing my first rule of the bachelor party: no discussions about kidney function."

"That's fair," she shrugged. "Thor, can I have more of that stuff?"

"It would be my honor."

As Thor poured more Asgardian liquor into the nearest drink he could find (a banana daiquiri), Rhodey cleared his throat.

"Hey, everyone!" he called. Nine super-powered heads jumped up. He cleared his throat. "We're all here tonight on this tavern conquest" – Thor laughed and clapped Maggie on the shoulder, almost knocking her out of her seat – "because a certain someone we all know is getting married tomorrow." Tony put up his hand, just in case they weren't aware. Rhodey grinned. "Tony, do you remember the first time we met?"

Tony leaned toward Vision and loudly whispered: "ooh, this is getting romantic."

Rhodey rolled his eyes. "The first time I ever saw you was in Introduction to Mechanical Engineering, 1986." Maggie shot a _wow, that's a long time ago_ look at Steve, but then realized that he was literally a hundred years old and felt awkward. Rhodey continued: "I remember looking at this scrawny, mouthy sixteen year old verbally eviscerating our professor, and thinking _Jesus, this kid is never going to make any friends._" Everyone laughed, but Rhodey held up his free hand. "Well, Tony. I'm very happy to admit that I was wrong." He gestured at the bar packed with Avengers – friends – and everyone's laughter turned into warm smiles. Tony raised his glass in a silent toast to them all.

Rhodey smiled again. "I think I speak for all of us when I say: Tony, I can't wait to see you get married to, frankly, the best thing that ever happened to you. I was there when you and Pepper first kissed–"

"And you're a treasured part of the memory," Tony shot back.

"– and I'm sure that the two of you have a lot of happiness in your future." Tony looked to be gearing up to derail Rhodey's speech, so Rhodey quickly finished up: "bachelors" – he raised his glass, and they followed suit – "let's do this just once because he's already got a big enough head as it is. To Tony!"

"To Tony!" they echoed, and downed their drinks.

Tony got to his feet. "I'd like to say a few words."

"Oh, here we go," Rhodey said as he fell into the seat beside Maggie. "Can't see a speech being done without adding your own, huh?"

"It's my bachelor party, you're meant to be nice to me," Tony replied.

"That's not in the rules."

Tony wheeled and faced the well-past tipsy Avengers. "Friends," he began. "Sisters," he added, raising his glass to Maggie. "Former co-workers," he raised his eyebrows at Clint, who flipped him off. "I never thought I'd ever have a bachelor's party, because I never saw myself getting married. But on the odd time I did think about it, I envisioned…" he spread his hands, as if setting the scene. "A week-long, booze-fueled, sex and rock and roll extravaganza. Probably in the Bahamas, but I'm not fussy." He gestured around himself. "But in deference to Steve's elderly sensibilities–"

"Fuck off, Stark."

A chorus of _oooh_s went around the bar, and Maggie doubled over laughing.

Tony pressed a hand to his chest. "Oh my, Rogers. Something changed in you when you grew that beard, I knew it." Now it was Steve's turn to flip Tony off, and Tony cackled. "Anyway," he went on. "This isn't at all what I pictured, but I've got to say it's pretty awesome. Cranky centenarians aside. _However_–" everyone paused, hanging on to his next word. Tony lifted his drink meaningfully. "There needs to be about seventy percent more drinking happening. So bottoms up Avengers!"

They all cheered and drank again, and Maggie laughed at the sensation of _disorientation_. Thor's stuff was no joke.

"And now we're hitting the dance floor!" Tony called over the noise. "Maggie, get Steve so he doesn't run away!"

Steve escaped Maggie's grasp but was caught by Thor, and the Stark bachelor party spilled onto the dance floor.

* * *

They took Manhattan by storm, dancing and drinking their way through bar after bar. They got periodic updates from the bachelorette party (which was somewhere in NYC too) in the form of texts and photographs. There didn't seem to be any pink plastic penises in the photos, but Maggie and the others got a kick out of one photograph of the group of them: Pepper, Natasha, Happy, Bucky, Jane Foster, Darcy Lewis, Wanda, Maria Hill, and Pepper's assistant Caroline, all wearing gold party hats and sipping from pink mimosas. They sent back a photo of the bachelors playing pool.

At midnight, Rhodey slung his arm around a very intoxicated Sam and shouted: "To the party boat!"

"To the _what_?" exclaimed Steve.

* * *

From: Bucky  
_Doll, we're doing something called drunk yoga. People have so much more time to come up with weird things in this century. I love it._

From: Maggie  
_Who's best at it? I bet Natasha._

From: Bucky  
_Maria's giving her a run for her money. Darcy's given up on the yoga part of drunk yoga._ _Everyone still alive on your end?_

From: Maggie  
_Party boat! _(attached photograph: a selfie of Maggie and Vision in front of a small ferry lit up with fairy lights.)

From: Bucky  
_Oh, that's going to go terribly. Vision knows how to swim, right?_

* * *

The boat took them out into the New York harbor as the bachelor party continued to drink, dance, and sing off-key renditions of ABBA songs (Clint). Maggie and Thor had a drunken conversation about his new Asgardian settlement and Maggie thought she figured something out about interdimensional portals but she'd have to check the validity of the science when she was sober. She danced with Vision, Sam, and Rhodey on the top deck of the party boat, and showed off her rapping skills. Steve, Bruce, Vision, and Tony played beer pong, which broke up when Bruce went to mix cocktails for everyone, and Sam and Tony made a bet on who could eat more cheese balls in a minute. Maggie zoned out for a minute, only to find that Steve had apparently decided to end a debate by showing how long he could do a handstand for.

Maggie was drunk on alien liquor, warm and happy on the small boat filled with friends. The lights of New York City were bright on the dark water, there was music in her ears and she was surrounded by a group of really weird, really awesome guys. She'd read somewhere that bachelor parties were to celebrate the 'last night of being unattached' but this didn't feel like that – it felt like a celebration of the future, of the man Tony had become and who he would grow to be. It felt like a celebration of love. She found herself tearing up over the thought and had to remind herself that alcohol lowered emotional inhibitions. _I'll keep an eye on that._

As she hazily watched Thor arm wrestle Vision, her phone rang. She picked up without checking the screen.

"Margaret Abigail Stark, first of her name speaking."

"… hi, doll."

"Bucky!" she pulled the phone away from her ear. "It's Bucky!" she shouted to no one in particular, and across the deck Steve waved with a dopey smile on his face. She put the phone back to her ear. "Bucky! Steve says hi!"

"Hi Steve," he said wryly. "How are you guys going?"

"Thor has _booze_, Bucky! _Booze_! Hooch! Moonshine!"

"It is called _Óðroerir_," Thor said helpfully.

"You heard him, Othro – othra… _booze_! I got drunk! And not sad scientific drunk!"

Bucky's laugh melted over the line, and Maggie felt a rush of heat to her face. _Hoo boy. _She blinked away the feeling as he spoke again: "Uh, is there anyone sober around?"

"Not if I can help it! Wait, Tony's not all that drunk."

"Why not?"

"Doesn't like it much any more," she explained. "I mean he's not _sober _but he's not _plastered_."

"Alright, put him on."

"Why?"

"No reason."

She crossed the deck to where Tony stood at a railing with Bruce, and waved the phone at him. He took it from her with a quirked brow and answered "this is the better looking sibling, how can I help you?"

Maggie decided to lie down on the deck. Bruce lay down next to her and they looked up at the stars for the duration of the phone call, in which Tony laughed a lot and then for some reason gave Bucky the name and number of the Avengers contact in the NYPD. After about five minutes Tony hung up, and turned back to see all the male Avengers eyeing him.

He snorted and handed Maggie her phone. "So," he said. "_Apparently _the bachelorette party has taken out a portion of the New York Yakuza."

The party boat erupted with questions and exclamations, and Tony just started laughing again. "A couple of them figured out that the bar they were at was a front for weapons dealers, and things unfolded from there. There was a small battle in the Upper East Side – don't look so panicked, they're all fine – and a few of them got arrested in the confusion, but it's all squared away now."

"Do they need us to come get them?" Rhodey asked.

"Apparently not, they just needed to sort things out with the NYPD. They're heading to another bar to finish the night off."

They all stood around in silence for a few moments. Still sitting on the deck, Maggie smirked at the look on Tony's face.

"You want to shut down a gang now too, don't you?"

He grinned at her. "Nope, I'm perfectly happy knowing that my beautiful wife is the scourge of New York's underbelly." He looked tipsy and happy, and Maggie laughed.

"She's not your wife yet, remember. That's kind of the point of tonight."

He waved a hand. "Formalities."

"You're adorable," said Clint. Tony didn't dispute it.

* * *

They sat for the rest of the boat ride on the prow of the deck, clinking beer bottles and lazily trading jokes and memories.

As they headed back to port, Maggie noticed that she hadn't seen Tony in a while. So she got to her feet and stalked through the party boat, occasionally knocking into walls, until she came to the top deck and spotted him at the very front railing, eyes on the city.

She tried to sidle up beside him silently, but the effect was ruined when she knocked her elbow into the railing and accidentally trod on Tony's toes.

"Ow."

"Sorry, sorry!"

"Don't be sorry," he said, with a grin spreading across his face. He spread his arms. "I'm getting married tomorrow!"

She returned his grin. "I know, I got the invite."

He put his hands on her shoulders, suddenly serious, and shook her gently. "Maggie. Maggie. Maggie."

"Yes Tony."

"You know Pepper."

"We've met."

"I just…" he pulled his hands away and ran them over his face. When he pulled them away, he looked astounded. "I just love her _so much_."

Maggie smiled at him, taking in his wide eyes and poleaxed expression. She saw the truth of his statement written all over his face, and it made her heart glow.

* * *

Standing on a Tribeca rooftop in a suit, Maggie saw that same expression on her brother's face: awe, trepidation, excitement, and _love_. Then she realized that the small orchestral arrangement had struck up a new tune, and she turned to face the aisle.

The first to emerge from the doors at the other end of the rooftop was Happy – he was Pepper's brides-person, and he looked perfectly handsome in a suit that was a little more fancy than what he usually wore to work. If the way his eyes darted as he strode up the aisle was anything to go by, he wasn't leaving the event's security up to Tony's private security firm either. After Happy came Natasha, the 'friend-of-honor' (because she had flat out refused to be called a maid), looking stunning in a sea foam green gown the same shade of Maggie, Rhodey, and Happy's ties. Her eyes glinted as she strode up the aisle.

And then.

"Turtledove has arrived," Maggie murmured under her breath, just to make Tony and Rhodey laugh.

Pepper had chosen an elegant, backless ivory dress with a sheer lace floral pattern over the white gown. She looked as refined and poised as an empress, with her head held high and her strawberry blonde hair arranged in a braided updo. Her emergence from the rooftop doors inspired gasps amongst the small crowd, and Maggie could only find one word to describe how she looked: _stunning._

And sure enough, the look on Tony's face was stunned. He swayed back a little as he took her in, and Maggie smiled as his thunderstruck expression transformed into a soft look of awe.

He took a breath. "Hoooo boy."

* * *

**A/N: Next chapter: the actual ceremony! The reception! Speeches! Crying!**

**IMPORTANT AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hey guys, after I post the second part of this one I think I'm going to go on hiatus for real. I realized I need to have a bit of a break to wait for Endgame and figure out what I'm going to do after that. I really love writing these one shots but I'm not sure what Endgame holds or where I'm going to take the storyline of the Wyvern, so I figure it's best to wait and see what I'll do with this universe. Depending on how things go I might just incorporate the content of some of these one shots into the main storyline.  
****I do have some more one shots written but I'm going to hang on to them for now. And you never know, I might end up working on some of my other planned projects in the meantime! Thanks for all your lovely comments and enthusiasm, you guys are really the best x**

* * *

**Reviews**

**Red Vixen: not the birthday, as you can see! I'm glad you liked the Tony Bucky talk, it was a long time coming :)**

**Guest: I'm glad you liked the angst, and the eventual reconciliation! I too am a bit of a fan of the damsel in distress trope, but I'm too much of a stubborn independent ass to include it in my writing I think – I'll just have to indulge the guilty pleasure by reading other people's awesome stories. Hope you enjoyed the drunk Avengers!**

**The1975Love: Thank you my dear :) I really enjoyed writing that three parter so I'm glad you enjoyed reading it!**


	9. Pepper and Tony (Part Two)

**Pepper and Tony (Part Two)**

"You alright man?" Rhodey murmured. "You nervous?"

Tony shook his head emphatically. "Hell no, she's… she's not walking fast enough, shouldn't she be up here by now?"

Pepper smiled up at Tony as if she knew exactly what he was muttering to his best man, and took her sweet time striding between the rows of their gathered friends. Music lilted through the breeze, and the sun shone on the golden strands of Pepper's hair.

When she smiled at her seated parents and then came to take her place beside Tony, everyone in the audience beamed at the sight of them taking each other in.

Tony didn't seem to know where to look. "Wow. Are you sure you're here to marry me? Because I don't know what I _ever _did to deserve–"

With laughing eyes Pepper pressed a finger against his lips. "I'm sure."

The officiant cleared her throat. "Welcome, family, friends and loved ones." Everyone stilled. "We are gathered here to celebrate the wedding of Tony and Pepper."

The ceremony itself was very simple. The officiant said a few words about love, trust, and mutual respect, and then turned her attention to Tony and Pepper. They stood facing each other, their hands clasped together. She nodded at Tony.

"Do you, Anthony Edward Stark, take this woman to be your wedded wife?"

Maggie had half expected him to be glib, to grin and say _sure_ or something, but Tony did nothing of the sort. He looked right into Pepper's eyes and said: "I do," in a tone that said so much more. Pepper smiled.

"Do you, Virginia Potts, take this man to be your wedded husband?"

Her smile widened. "I do."

The officiant nodded. "I understand you've prepared vows?"

"Right." Pepper's eyes crinkled and she smiled at Tony, dozens of unsaid things in the look. She couldn't seem to wipe the smile from her face, even as she cleared her throat and took a breath. Maggie grinned at the two of them. Of course Pepper didn't need note cards to deliver her vows, the woman was a world-class CEO with years of experience giving speeches.

Pepper met Tony's eyes. "Tony."

"Pepper," he said reflexively, and the audience laughed.

"We've never been very traditional," she began, her blue eyes fixed on Tony. "I run your old company, you fight bad guys for a living. We've been through aliens, and robots, and dozens of other challenges big and small. Through it all, I have loved being your friend, and your partner. You're the most remarkable person I've ever met." She shook her head at him fondly. "We've never been very traditional, but we've tried to be. We've said over and over again that there'll be no more surprises, that from now on things will be _normal_." She leaned in. "But I don't want that. I love being surprised by you and this… frankly crazy life that we have. I…" she opened and closed her mouth. "Damn, I really thought I knew what I wanted to say." Tony's mouth curled up as Pepper rolled her eyes at herself. She took a breath, then met his eyes again. Her next words were low, as if she only wanted Tony to hear them. "I love you. And I want to spend the rest of my life with you. So I thought, for today, I'd offer you a traditional wedding vow."

Peppers fingers tightened around Tony's. "I, _Pepper _Potts, take you, Tony Stark, to be my husband. To have and to hold, from this day forward. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live."

When she smiled to signal that she was done Tony darted forward and kissed her, only jumping back when the officiant said: "we're not at that part yet!" He grinned unashamedly at Pepper, and she reached up to cover her mouth as she laughed.

"Alright, my turn?" Tony raised his eyebrows at the officiant, who gestured for him to continue. With a flourish, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a set of notecards.

Pepper raised an eyebrow.

Tony cleared his throat dramatically and glanced down at his first card. "Pep, I'm sure you're kind of nervous about what I've prepared to say right now–" she shook her head. "Oh, that's brave of you."

Everyone laughed, and Tony's eyes twinkled. "You've always been brave. I've, uh, prepared these cards…" he waved them. "But instead, how about this:" he turned and handed the cards to Rhodey, who took them with a long-suffering expression.

Tony turned back. "I think everyone here knows that I'm at my most honest when I veer off the prepared script." That earned him more chuckles, and Pepper shook her head at him again. Tony squared his shoulders and took Pepper's hands. "Pepper. I could say a whole lot about how amazing you are, how you're much smarter than me in all the ways that count, how you're strong, and brave, and how you've always seen through all the masks I've chosen to wear." _Awww_, went the crowd. Maggie glanced out to see Steve and Bruce already crying, and then realized that Rhodey and Happy were not that far off from tears either. Tony continued: "You also give great head massages. I could talk for hours, and you know better than most that I am _very _capable of doing that. But I don't need to. I'm here to make a vow." He took a breath. "I haven't made a lot of promises in my life – and never a vow. Most of my promises have been to _protect_: to protect this country, or the world, or you." His dark eyes were earnest as they looked into Pepper's face. "And I do vow to protect you, with everything I have. But that's not all. I vow to be your friend, and your partner. I vow to honor, respect, and trust you, and to take pride in each of your remarkable achievements. Because you are the best thing that ever happened to me. Because of all the things I've done in my life, nothing will ever be as important as being your husband. I love you." He looked right into her eyes, and for a moment it was as if there was no one else on that rooftop with the two of them. Then Tony swallowed. "So let's get on with it already."

Maggie heard a few teary sniffs amidst the low laughter that followed, but she didn't tear her eyes away from Tony and Pepper's faces. She'd never been to a wedding. She hadn't imagined it could be like _this: _so… honest.

The officiant stepped forward. "May I have the rings please?"

Rhodey reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a simple black box. As the officiant opened the box and handed the first simple silver band to Pepper, a smile crept up Maggie's face.

* * *

Maggie had been in the meeting room with the rest of the wedding party when Tony had the idea. They'd been discussing ideas for the ceremony itself, when all of a sudden Tony got to his feet and walked out without a word. Maggie had exchanged glances with Pepper and Natasha, her eyebrows raised. But then they'd all just shrugged it off as a Tony oddity and continued with planning. Happy and Rhodey were in the middle of a vehement debate about the color scheme for the rooftop when Tony walked back in, carrying a glass box with what looked like a prototype miniature arc reactor inside it.

He placed it on the table in front of Pepper, and Maggie leaned over to look. _Proof that Tony Stark has a heart_, read an inscription around the reactor.

"That's the first one you ever made, right? In Afghanistan?" said Rhodey.

Tony ignored them: he had eyes only for Pepper. "I would've thrown this thing out the first chance I got, but you saved it."

Pepper smiled and traced the glass. "Proof that Tony Stark has a heart," she murmured.

"You were right," Tony said frankly. "You're always right. So I thought… why not make our wedding rings out of this?"

Her eyes widened.

Tony continued: "To keep that proof. Proof that I have a heart, and… proof that it'll always be yours."

Pepper shot to her feet and threw her arms around Tony's neck. Maggie turned to Rhodey and mimed sticking her finger down her throat, but Rhodey just smiled tearfully. Even Natasha looked a little softer around the eyes. Happy was already crying.

Maggie rolled her eyes, looked back to the prototype arc reactor, and started thinking about the best way to melt it down.

* * *

The titanium alloy bands gleamed in the sunlight as the officiant handed them over, and Pepper and Tony shared a private smile.

Pepper slipped the larger ring onto Tony's long, callused finger as she murmured: "With this ring, I thee wed."

Tony flipped the other ring in the air before catching it deftly and sliding it onto Pepper's finger with surprising gentleness. "With this ring, I thee wed."

The officiant beamed at the two of them. "By the power vested in me by the State of New York, I now pronounce you husband and wife. _Now_, Mr Stark, you may kiss the bride."

Tony didn't get a chance to 'kiss the bride' because the minute the officiant had said the word _wife _Pepper had darted forward and pressed her lips to Tony's, kissing him as she smiled.

* * *

In the rush of taking photos after the ceremony, Maggie saw Tony pull Peter aside for a moment. They spoke for less than a minute, but they exchanged a laugh and then Peter wrapped his lanky arms around his mentor, just for a moment. He pulled away without seeing the war between affection and surprise on Tony's face, and turned to congratulate Pepper.

Maggie smiled to herself. Peter couldn't officially be a part of today – couldn't appear in any of the photos, couldn't go to the reception with the rest of them. But Maggie was positive that Tony and Pepper would never forget that a certain wide-eyed teenage boy had been a part of their day.

"Are you alright, Ms Stark?"

Maggie blinked, and turned to see Peter and his aunt by her side. May wasn't paying attention, though, as she was in the middle of a conversation with Happy. "Hm?"

"You've got some, um…" Peter gestured at his own face awkwardly, and shuffled his feet.

Maggie touched her cheeks. "Oh, tears." She wiped them away and smiled at her damp fingers. "Y'know Peter, sometimes I get used to my life. But then I realize that five years ago, the concept of crying from happiness at my brother's wedding would have been… impossible. Unthinkable." She grinned. "It makes these tears _important_."

"If you say so..."

Maggie would have been surprised by Bucky swooping in to kiss her cheek if she hadn't sensed him coming from yards away. She pretended to scowl at him, and he settled his metal arm around her waist.

"Stop traumatizing the poor boy, Meg. Teenagers are allergic to adults crying."

"I- I don't mind," Peter stammered.

"Liar," she teased. "I'm glad you could come, Peter. I think it meant a lot to Tony."

"Yeah, he… he said so." Peter scratched the back of his neck.

"He did?" Maggie blinked, but then shook herself. Of course he had – Tony was surrounded by people he trusted and loved, on the day he'd married the love of his life. What better time for honesty?

May called Peter away to say their final goodbyes, and Maggie turned into Bucky's arms. His dark suit was warm from the sun, and the ends of his hair tickled her face as she looked into his sea-grey eyes.

"I love you," she said softly.

He nudged his nose against hers. Normally they avoided PDA like the plague, but… everyone was watching Tony and Pepper anyway. "I love you too."

"Maggie!" shouted Tony. "The man said we're taking wedding party photos, get over here and look photogenic or you're fired!"

Maggie and Bucky laughed against each other's mouths, and she turned away to go smile for the wedding photographer. And if Tony had bunny ears in a few of the shots, that was something for him to find out when he and Pepper went through the wedding album.

* * *

Where the ceremony had been a quiet family affair, the reception was a massive star studded party. This was partly because it was expected, partly because for all his growth Tony still liked a big party, and partly because it would help strengthen their connections in the business and political worlds.

They'd booked the Grand Ballroom in the Plaza Hotel; a massive, opulent room shining with dazzling lights, chandeliers, and glowing candles at each table. The room itself was all marble and stone, but the decorators had also given it an outdoor feel with verdant boughs of foliage arranged around the space. The decorations hadn't been planned to make the reception look like "Iron Man's Wedding", but Maggie didn't feel like that part of their lives was missing – there was little hints of it, from Pepper's stunning red lips, to the gold lining the ballroom, to the arc reactor whose glow was hidden under Tony's tuxedo. Maggie saw Pepper lay her hand over the arc reactor sometimes, as if to check that it was still there.

After Tony and Pepper's predictably grand entrance, Maggie sat at the long wedding party table with them and the other grooms-and-brides-people. But as the volume in the room began to increase around them, she turned her gaze to the guests.

She recognized more than a few of them, but not because she knew them: this wedding was the place to be for business people, politicians, and all the higher ups of New York and the United States. The President was in attendance, as well as a few members of the British Royal Family. The instantly-recognizable faces reminded Maggie of just how important Tony and Pepper were in the world. T'Challa and a Wakandan cohort (they couldn't make it to the ceremony) sat at a table with some of the Avengers, Thor had been seated with some members of the UN (Maggie planned to go check on his diplomatic relationship building later), and Dr Strange and Wong were at a table with some very well-natured celebrities who even Strange couldn't piss off.

* * *

Several months ago, Maggie had walked in on one of Tony and Pepper's many wedding planning sessions.

"– but we can't seat _him_ within two tables of Dr Capriot because of the thing in Senegal–"

"Yeah but what then, are you going to put him with the _socialites_?"

Maggie had cast an eye over their frenzied discussion and the mountain of notes, profiles, and seating plans spread on the table. She cleared her throat. "This all seems… very complicated. I've put less planning into missions than you two are putting into the seating alone."

"Oh, this _is _a mission," Pepper said with a grim face. "How to mix all the individual components here to create the _least _explosive mixture."

Maggie glanced at Tony, who looked about three seconds from tearing his hair out.

"Well… happy mission planning."

* * *

But now, in the glittering Plaza ballroom, Maggie could only say that everything was going perfectly. There were no fights, no raised voices, only drinking and good times. She smiled. _Maybe we ought to get Pepper in on our mission planning._

There was time to mingle in between speeches and other little wedding traditions, so Maggie drifted through the crowd. She eavesdropped on conversations between world leaders, laughed under her breath at Happy as he carried out his emcee duties (he was stuffy and formal, and Tony and Pepper clearly loved it), and chatted with her own connections from all walks of life. As dinner was served Maggie hung over the back of Bucky's chair and chatted with the Avengers, while Bucky traced patterns on the back of her hand. Vision seemed fascinated by the spectacle of a _wedding_, Bruce looked like he was trying to fade into the background, and Sam and Steve were loudly arguing about _something _(wedding menus?) while Natasha cast dry, witty barbs in their direction. The more media-shy members of the Avengers seemed a little overwhelmed, but it helped that there were so many of them – when the noise and the lights got too much, the others stepped in.

On her way back to her table (leaving a bright red parting kiss on Bucky's cheek) Maggie drifted past Thor, who was having a remarkably insightful discussion with the United Nations Secretary General (in French, thanks to Thor's Allspeak) about the legal complications of recognizing Asgard as a member of the UN. She paused to politely interrupt and greet the Secretary General and say that she was sorry his wife couldn't come (they'd met at a fundraising function last year). She then left, but not before squeezing Thor's shoulder and saying: "I hope we see more of you around here, Thor. Everyone feels safer for having you around." Thor bowed his head with a knowing glint in his eye, and she returned to the wedding party.

Dinner passed in a blur of good food, laughter, bubbly champagne, and trading nonverbal communication across the ballroom with Bucky – he was shining in his corner of the room, bringing out the charming Bucky Barnes who had made half of prewar Brooklyn fall in love with him. The politicians and celebrities who'd never seen Bucky as more than the Winter Soldier at first warmed to him, and by the time the dinner plates were cleared they were laughing along and talking about their childhoods as if they'd known him their whole lives. Steve looked like he might spontaneously combust from excitement.

The wedding cake was tall and terraced, with an elegant gold ribbon around the base of each layer. When Pepper and Tony stood up to cut it they hit a button on the table which made the cake come to life: each layer shivered and then separated cleanly, hovering on metal plates. Within seconds each layer was neatly separated in midair, while the bright gold light of the hovering plates made the cake look like it was glowing.

The guests gasped and applauded, and Pepper grinned at Tony as if this was the best thing he'd ever invented. Maggie smiled as she recalled the long hours in the workshop she and Tony had spent together, working out how to make a non-heat-generating repulsor that wouldn't melt the icing. Pepper and Tony leaned in to cut the first slice.

And then came time for speeches. Pepper's father was visibly nervous because of the large, illustrious crowd, but his short speech was packed with sheer affection for his incredible daughter. Next came Rhodey, who earned a few wolf whistles (from the Avengers) as he stood and shuffled his notes. Rhodey's speech was complete with plenty of teasing, but ended as a heartfelt testament to Tony and Pepper's growth together as people and his well wishes for their future. He made a few people cry. Natasha's friend-of-honor speech didn't have quite the sentimental weight that Rhodey's did, but she showed just how much she noticed about people as she described Pepper and Tony's characters, and how they worked together as a couple. Maggie had been a little worried that her speech would come off a little like an intelligence report, as that had been the context in which she'd met the couple, but there was no mistaking that this speech came from a friend.

Once everyone had raised their glasses after Natasha's speech, Maggie got to her feet and took the microphone from the blonde ex-assassin.

"You'll be great," Natasha murmured, as if she could sense the nerves thrumming up and down Maggie's spine. Maggie had spoken publicly quite a few times by now, but this was different. This was for _Tony. _

Maggie cleared her throat and looked up, taking in the glittering lights and expectant faces. On the other side of the room Bucky held one metal and one flesh thumb in the air. She took a breath.

"Hi everyone. I know... I know it's usually just the best man who gives a speech, but I think you'll all agree that Rhodey's speech was terrible so I thought I'd make up for it." Everyone laughed, and in the small relief that gave her Maggie grinned down at Rhodey. He rolled his eyes. She cleared her throat again and glanced at Pepper and Tony – Pepper smiled encouragingly, Tony was busy silently making fun of Rhodey.

"I've known my brother for roughly… eight years of my life," she continued. "That's another story, you might have heard about it, never mind. Now, people will tell you lots of things about Tony Stark. They'll tell you that he's arrogant. That he's difficult to work with, egotistical, a terrible businessman and frankly a bit of a showoff." She paused, and those in the room who knew Tony traded glances. "Now of course that's all true–" Maggie grinned in the laughter that followed, and caught the dessert spoon that Tony threw at her. She winked.

"But I think we all know that's not the entire story. I _idolized _my brother when I was a little girl. He was smart, and funny, and got to go wherever and do whatever he wanted. But I didn't really know him. Then when we got a second chance years later, I think that's when I finally got to know him. And I realized things about him: Tony Stark is… a genius, yes. He's also a hero. I'd say most people know that about him too. He's also _incredibly _sneaky. Because under the Iron Man mask there's a man who's _kind_, and funny, a huge dork who's smart in a way that has nothing to do with IQ points. He's forgiving, and patient, and so loyal that he'll put his life on the line for the people he deems worthy of protecting. And he deems _humanity _worthy. He's seen the worst and the best of us and he still puts himself on the front line to defend us all."

She looked out at the crowd, and watched people look from her to Tony with appraisal. As if they were realizing that she was _right. _"Tony Stark is an Avenger, but at his heart… he's a defender." She swallowed. "I came to learn this after meeting my brother again a few years ago. I think it's a truth that very few people know. But you know who saw that in Tony, years before he ever busted out of an Afghanistan cave with an idea that would change the world?" She turned, and smiled at a damp-eyed Pepper. "Pepper Potts."

The room _awwww_ed. Tony cocked his head and looked from his sister to his wife, a half-smile on his lips.

"Pepper Potts has always seen the best in Tony, even when he made it difficult to find. So I… I want to thank you, Pepper. You are one of the kindest, most generous people I've ever had the fortune to meet in my rollercoaster life, and I want to thank you for seeing my brother. The first time I saw the two of you together – remember that? Yeah, not a great moment for any of us, but I could already see then how the two of you just _fit._ You bring out the best in each other, and that's an incredible thing to find."

Pepper and Tony reached for each other's hands.

Maggie cleared her throat again. "Now I'm sure we've all heard quite enough about love for one evening, but I'll finish by saying this: I've lived an odd, upside down kind of life. I only figured out what love was when I was twenty eight years old, but once I found out about it I made sure to do my research." She paused as the guests laughed.

"I was very thorough," she informed them. "I looked into the science and the chemicals behind love, and I read up extensively on the dynamics of a healthy, long-lasting relationship." She heard Bucky laugh loudly. "Seriously. I knew nothing about love, so I was determined to learn everything."

She turned to face the newly married couple. "So what I'm about to tell you, Tony and Pepper, I tell you from an empirically-based standpoint: I don't have to wish you happiness, or trust, or growth as you embark on your marriage. I don't have to hope that you will continue to treat each other with mutual respect and support. Because I already know that you will." She raised her glass. "To Pepper and Tony!"

"To Pepper and Tony!" shouted the crowd, and Maggie set down her microphone triumphantly. She was about to take her seat when she felt two pairs of arms wrap around her and envelop her in big, damp, hug. Maggie stiffened, then relaxed into it. Pepper was crying, and after a few moments she pressed a scarlet kiss against Maggie's cheek. Tony's eyes were damp too, and when he pulled away he muttered:

"You're such a dork, Maggot."

Maggie pulled him back in for a squeezing hug. "I learned it from my brother."

He held her for another second before pulling away, ruffling her hair, and swiping up the microphone: "Alright people, let's dance!"

* * *

Pepper and Tony danced together for the first time as a married couple to one of Pepper's favorite classical pieces, slow but still fast enough for them to laugh breathlessly together through the quicker steps. Pepper was obviously a little nervous about dancing in front of so many people, but Tony turned her with a grin and her nerves melted away. Maggie didn't think they'd looked away from each other for the entire song. They looked beautiful together, the years and trust and love between them plain to see.

In the closing notes Maggie hiccuped and brought a hand to her mouth, overwhelmed with emotion. Bucky squeezed her other hand as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

When the next song started up and people moved onto the dance floor, Bucky bent his head until his lips were right beside her ear.

"Feel like teaching me some moves?" he murmured. She turned to him with a slow smile.

* * *

The band was Pepper's favorite band, and for the rest of the night they covered wedding classics as well as adding some of their own stuff – their style was a jazz/modern mix, and Bucky really got into it. At one point Wanda got on stage and played guitar with them.

After a few dances with Bucky, Maggie snagged Pepper for a dance.

"So you're my sister-in-law now," Maggie grinned, one hand on Pepper's waist and the other squeezing Pepper's left hand.

Pepper beamed. "It's an honor. I've never had a sister."

"Neither have I," Maggie reflected. "I'll do some reading on what sisters are meant to do."

Pepper laughed at that, and Maggie spun her just to make her laugh harder. "I promise you that what we usually do with each other is enough," Pepper replied. "By the way, I really liked your speech. It was lovely."

"I do what I can," Maggie shrugged. "I meant everything I said. Congratulations, by the way."

Pepper beamed. Over Pepper's shoulder Maggie spotted Tony and Bucky standing side-by-side at the bar, watching the two of them dance. As she turned Pepper once more, Bucky said something which made Tony double over laughing.

Pepper and Maggie chatted about the wedding and the assembled guests for the rest of the song, until Tony stepped in and whirled Maggie into a dance. For the next few hours Maggie danced with a new person every song, until she'd made her way through all of the Avengers and most of their friends. Happy refused to dance ("I need to keep eyes on everyone"), so for the space of a song Maggie joined him in his vigil by the emcee podium. The moment was quiet. Maggie watched Pepper and Steve dancing, saw Tony and Thor chatting with a group of diplomats, smiled at the sight of Jane Foster dragging Bruce onto the dance floor. Natasha and Rhodey were _foxtrotting_.

She glanced at Happy, who looked somber. "You okay, Happy?"

He blinked. "Yeah, yeah I am." He smiled at her. "I've been waiting for this day for so long."

She returned the smile. "First time I heard of Pepper's existence was when I was looking at Tony's Wikipedia page. This was about three seconds after I realized that he was still alive, so I wasn't thinking all that much about her. But then I did my research and… I liked everything I saw. It was hard to get at her character, but she seemed wonderful on paper. And then I met her and…" Maggie gestured to Pepper just as she looked over at Tony and smiled. "They deserve each other."

"That they do," Happy agreed, and his chest swelled with some mix of joy, pride, and satisfaction.

The next song started just as T'Challa walked by, flanked by powerful women in red and gold. Maggie clapped Happy on the shoulder. "See ya, Happy. I'm going to go dance with a king's bodyguard."

* * *

Throughout the night, people Maggie barely knew kept coming up to her and exclaiming "Oh, it'll be you next time!"

Each time, Maggie just smiled. She and Bucky were taking their time, finding their new normal and enjoying the simple pleasures of dating each other – they had all the time in the world. But if Maggie had learned anything since breaking away from HYDRA, it was that she didn't owe an explanation of her love life to anyone. So after a few moments of receiving no response from Maggie other than a bland smile, the stranger usually turned away to dance.

As the night wore on and the Asgardian liquor started to sink in (not an excessive amount tonight), Maggie and Bucky danced with each other more and more often. The liquor buzzed in their veins and the music rose and fell around them, and Maggie felt like she could fall asleep right there on the dance floor, with her head on Bucky's shoulder and his arms around her. His metal thumb traced circles in the small of her back.

After a few more songs, Happy picked up the microphone once more and announced that it was time for the bride to throw her bouquet.

Maggie picked her head up off Bucky's shoulder and quirked a brow at him. "I'm not going to catch it."

Bucky looked over at the women gathering in front of the podium where Pepper stood. "Mm, looks like some stiff competition."

She laughed. "Wait, do you _want _me to catch it?"

"Do you want me to want you to catch it?" he asked, his eyes gleaming.

"Do you want me to want you to want me to catch it?"

Bucky opened his mouth and got as far as "Do you want me to want–" when Pepper tossed her bouquet of lilies and rosemary over her shoulder.

But it turned out it didn't matter anyway, because as the bouquet soared through the air a flash of red light bloomed over the waiting women - and suddenly the flowers were in Wanda's hands. She shrugged with a small smile, and the group of women laughed and applauded her as if they'd just seen a magic trick (which in a way, they had). Bucky laughed under his breath and ducked to kiss Maggie on the cheek.

"One day," he murmured, and she looked up just in time to see the gleam in his eyes. She smirked and smoothed her hand up his metal arm.

"One day."

* * *

Toward the end of the night Tony and Pepper slipped unseen out of the ballroom (well, unseen by most). Maggie watched their grinning faces vanish from sight and murmured into her earpiece: "Turtledove and Tin Can have left the building", smiling to herself at the thought of the nondescript yellow cab that would drive the pair to a private airport on the other side of the city.

Pepper and Tony's honeymoon location was a closely guarded secret for security reasons, despite intense media interest. Luxury resorts around the world had been fielding questions about whether the illustrious couple would be staying with them.

But Maggie knew that there was a little cabin on a beachfront somewhere tropical, close to a little village where no one cared about Avengers or aliens, with not much other than a bed, a hammock, and enough food to last two people a couple of weeks.

"Send-off complete," Natasha murmured a few moments later, the audio a little crackly from wind, as if she were standing on a roof. "Over and out."

Maggie slipped back through the crowd to Bucky, who accepted her into his arms with a small smile. The band played a slow jazz piece, and couples on the dance floor swayed in time with the soft notes.

"Mission complete?" he murmured.

She leaned up to kiss him, and smiled as his hands found her waist. When she pulled away his blue-grey eyes were fixed on her.

"Mission complete," she echoed. Her smile curved into a smirk. "But I've got plenty of other missions."

* * *

**And that's all from me for a while, lovelies. Thanks for all your reviews and support. I'm planning to do some prep and research for another fic project in the run up to Endgame, but I don't think I'll post anything just yet. Stay tuned for more after Endgame! (speaking of which, your friendly author is NERVOUS). Bye!**

* * *

**Reviews:**

**The1975Love: I'm still holding out hope for pepperony after Endgame (la la la I'm living in deniaaallll). Thanks lovely!**


	10. Good Taste

**Good Taste**

**A/N: Here's my apology for not having a midweek chapter for the Wyvern ready - enjoy!**

* * *

Maggie Stark and Steve Rogers got along with each other perfectly well. They'd known each other (or at least known _about _each other) for a while now, they had lots in common, and Bucky Barnes loved them both.

They felt perfectly comfortable teasing each other (Steve had gone bright red when Maggie unearthed the instructional videos he'd performed in for US schools and asked "Do you think Peter learned about his changing body from you?"), and worked well in a team.

But one day, Maggie found herself sitting at the kitchen table with Steve, Vision, Sam, and Rhodey as they chatted about Steve's short-lived and ill-fated romance with Sharon Carter. And though she'd briefly met Carter, had even witnessed her and Steve's first kiss, Maggie was quickly realizing that she didn't actually _know_ Steve all that well. He made jokes that surprised her, referenced memories and stories that she'd never been a part of. It turned out he had a lot of opinions about Game of Thrones. As Steve and Vision traded theories about the ending of the series, Maggie eyed Steve closely. He kept up this stoic, straight-faced façade, but the closer she looked she could see the amusement glimmering in his blue eyes as he chatted with his friends.

Maggie rifled through her memories of Bucky's best friend – and she quickly realized that she and Steve had never actually spent much time together. _Hm._

Steve, Vision, and Rhodey got called away to an intel meeting, and Maggie turned to Sam. He seemed content to relax at the table, rifling through a bag of Hershey's Kisses and keeping half an eye on the Oprah channel on the TV screen across the room.

Maggie had questions. Normally she might ask Bucky, but in this situation he was biased. Tony and Pepper were still on their honeymoon, so she couldn't ask them either.

"Sam."

He looked up and met her eye. "Hm?"

"What's the social protocol for befriending your romantic partner's friends?"

He pulled his hand out of the bag of chocolates. "This is about Steve."

"No, Sam, it's about _you_," she said with the air of one imparting a great secret.

He made a disgusted noise. "God, I hope not."

"Well?"

"What do you mean, well? If you want to be friends with Steve, be friends with Steve."

"How."

He put down the Hershey's Kisses and sat up straight. "You're worried about this, aren't you?"

Maggie frowned. "Bucky and I are still working out how our lives fit together. Steve is a big part of his life and I hadn't… hadn't factored that in before. But it's not just that, I… I don't just want to be friends with him because he's Bucky's friend. I want to be friends with him because he's _Steve._"

Sam cocked his head and smiled at her, his eyes filled with genuine warmth. "Well… I don't know, you don't have to be friends with your partner's friends, but it helps. Some people just don't get along – my uncle's husband really doesn't get along with his best friend, but they make it work."

She frowned again. "That seems like a complication."

"It is," Sam said with a shrug. "But I don't see why you and Steve wouldn't get along. I know he likes you."

"He does?"

"Sure, after you stopped trying to kill us." He grinned at her to soften the joke. "But if you want to get to know him better, then I'd suggest just hanging out, the two of you. That way you can be _friend _friends, instead of being two people who know each other through Bucky." He eyed her. "You really don't need to look so worried. Steve is friends with Tony, and if he can manage that then I'm sure you'll be a walk in the park."

Maggie chewed her lip. "Sometimes I don't relate well to other people. Something about not having a very standard upbringing."

Sam's mouth quirked up. "I think you might find that's a problem Steve shares."

She sat back in her seat and thought about it. "Okay. One-on-one hanging out. I can do that." She blew out a breath, and then eyed Sam more closely. "Hey, Sam."

"Yeah?" He'd gone back to the Kisses.

"I think we should be friends too."

His smile grew into a grin, and he leaned across the table to hold up a hand. "Agreed."

She shook his hand.

* * *

Three days later, after checking with Bucky, Maggie cornered Steve at the end of a team meeting and said: "I'm going to be in Manhattan this weekend for a conference, but I'm free on Sunday from mid morning. Would you like to get coffee with me?"

Steve blinked, clutching a StarkPad, and then glanced over at Bucky. "I, uh…"

"I'd like to get to know you," Maggie said with a small smile, and made sure her tone said very firmly _this is in no way romantic, you idiot._

Steve relaxed, then went tense again. "I… I… that sounds good. I'll see you… then."

"It's a date," she said, just to make him squirm, then ducked out of the room after kissing Bucky's cheek on her way past. As she strode down the corridor, she heard Steve ask:

"Did you know about this?"

"I knew she wanted to hang out with you," Bucky replied drily.

"Why?"

"Probably something to do with how you've known me for nearly ninety years, punk, and she lives in the same building as you." A pause. "Stop looking so freaked out, she's not going to torture you."

"… Jerk."

* * *

When Maggie finished up at the conference she changed into more comfortable clothes, and then caught the subway to the little coffee shop that Darcy Lewis had recommended (Maggie had been bemoaning about finding a nice, quality coffee shop in central Manhattan that didn't have too much crazy stuff like 'paleo wheatgrass', and Foster's dark-haired research assistant had popped her head up and reeled off the names of three places she liked).

Steve was already waiting outside the hole-in-the wall coffee shop when she arrived. He leaned against the brick wall beside the shopfront, his hands in the pockets of his dark jeans and his head bowed. He wore a blue button up, along with sunglasses and a baseball hat.

Maggie smiled at the disguise, but had to admit that Steve was doing a decent job of hiding his identity – he held himself a little differently, and moved like a shorter, less well-built man. He made himself inconspicuous. Maggie suspected that Romanoff had quite a bit to do with his training.

"Steve!" Maggie called, because her training was still better than his and he hadn't spotted her yet. He turned and greeted her with a smile and a wave, and then they both… stood awkwardly in front of each other. Maggie wasn't really a hugger, and Steve didn't appear to be one either. Foot traffic flowed past them.

"Hi," Steve eventually said, and took off his sunglasses.

"Hi!" Maggie cleared her throat and then gestured to the coffee shop. "So this is the place, apparently it's been here since 1908 and they've got a coffee grinder that's older than you. I'm reliably informed that they have good coffee that won't poison us."

"Well I hope your intel's up to shape."

"It always is," Maggie replied, and smiled at Steve as he opened the door for her.

They wandered into the shop, settled at a little table by the window where they both had sightlines throughout the space and also a view of the New York traffic streaming by outside, and ordered their drinks from the waitress (it turned out Steve was a black coffee kind of guy). In the wait for their coffee they chatted about the weather and how nice the coffee shop looked. By the time the waitress came back with their coffees, they'd fallen into awkward silence.

Steve didn't seem to know what to do with his hands – he kept putting them in his pockets, then wrapping them around his steaming coffee, then folding them on the table. He looked too big for the small round table and his vintage wooden chair, and he was visibly uncomfortable. Bucky had told Maggie that Steve was awkward with women, but this didn't seem to be about that – he'd hung out with plenty of women since landing in this century. Maggie wasn't exactly at ease herself, but for her that translated to sitting very still and displaying no emotion on her face.

Maggie felt torn. She knew too much about Steve, but not enough. It would be weird to ask him something like "so, what have you been drawing lately?" because they'd never spoken about his art before, but it would be disingenuous to ask what his hobbies were because she already knew. She knew all the details of his twelfth birthday party, knew about every job he'd ever had, knew how worried his mother had been about his health for his entire childhood. And she was very aware that though Steve didn't have quite the same level of detail about her, he knew everything that had happened to her in her life and had been there for some of her worst moments.

"So…" Steve said eventually, and his eyes darted up to her face. "You and Bucky."

Maggie sipped her coffee. "Yep."

He shifted in his seat. "I didn't realize… back in Germany, I didn't realize you were… together."

"Wasn't exactly something we were trying to get people to notice," she replied with a shrug. She wasn't sure if this was an improvement on awkward conversations about the weather.

"I guess not. I only realized when… in Siberia, when…"

"Yeah, I know." Maggie shook away the memories of snow caught in her eyelashes and Bucky's bloody lips against hers. Then she took in Steve's uncomfortable posture. "Wait, is this… a shovel talk of some kind? An intervention?"

His hands flew up. "No, no! I'm not trying to… I didn't mean that at all, I swear–"

"– are you sure? Because I know–"

"You and Bucky are… great, just great, I'm really glad you have each other, he'd never really… before…"

"I know, which is why I wondered–"

"It's fine," Steve blurted out. "Really, I promise this isn't an intervention or anything." He looked pained. "I don't even know why I brought it up."

Maggie sat back in her seat and thought _maybe because Bucky's the only thing we have in common_, but she didn't say it. Instead she swallowed uncomfortably, said: "Okay. So, um…" and trailed off into silence.

The rest of the coffee shop suddenly seemed very loud – Maggie and Steve looked at each other to the soundtrack of cups clinking against plates and other people conversing in low tones.

Then Steve shifted again and said: "I heard you and Tony were working on some kind of energy shield?"

She picked up the conversational bone with relief, and went into a long detailed explanation of the tech and how it could be used in combat. But she was very aware that they were just talking about work now.

Desperately searching for a way to save the conversation from being purely about their work relationship she brought up the fact that she'd been to the Smithsonian exhibit about him. But then she had to admit that she and Bucky had gone there together, since Bucky had remembered Steve pretty soon after the Helicarriers and had learned about his own history from a museum plaque, and Steve's face twisted up in such a heartbreaking way that Maggie spilled her coffee in the process of desperately apologizing.

They asked for the check pretty soon after that.

* * *

As they made their way back to Steve's car for what Maggie was sure would be an awkward drive back to the facility, they walked past a narrow, graffitied alleyway and heard a laugh.

Maggie glanced toward the source of the sound and instantly stopped walking.

Midway down the alley stood a young man in a shiny grey suit and a yellow tie, laughing as he crouched in front of what at first looked to be a mound of fabric, but when it moved was revealed to be a homeless man. The man in the suit waved a bill in front of the homeless man's face, then lifted a lighter to the note and set it on fire.

As he dropped the burning note on the other man's lap and laughed again as the man frantically brushed it away, Maggie heard a sharp intake of breath to her right.

Without a word exchanged between them, Maggie and Steve strode into the alley and stormed up to the suited man.

"Son," Steve said in a low voice, "you better not be doing what it looks like you're doing."

The man, who up close Maggie could see had a doughy white face and excessively-combed, neatly parted hair, turned around. With laughter still on his face he took in the sight of Captain America and the Wyvern standing ten feet away and glaring at him, and went white.

The homeless man glanced up, snorted, and then muttered: "karma, asshole."

The man in the suit started stammering. "I… this isn't, didn't think you would–" he started laughing nervously. "It's just a bit of fun, I'm not hurting anyone." He edged backwards as he stammered, his eyes darting between Steve and Maggie's faces and his nearest exit, the end of the alley.

The next time he glanced over his shoulder at his escape route Maggie darted forward, seized his gaudy yellow tie, and with her other hand snaked his wallet out of his pocket. The guy yelped and tried to jerk away, but she held him fast.

"Steve, you got a light?" she asked.

"No, I don't smoke. Never have." He looked a bit sad about it.

The homeless guy piped up: "I got his, Ms Stark. He dropped it." He held up a rectangular silver lighter.

"Thanks, buddy," Maggie said with a smile to the homeless man as she took it from him. His face was mostly obscured by his beanie and scruffy beard, but his eyes glinted as he watched her let go of the other man's tie, step a few paces away and then flick open the lighter. The flame glimmered in Maggie's eyes as she held it up to a corner of the wallet.

"Hey now," the suited guy protested as he stepped forward, "what the hell do you think–"

His sudden burst of courage wilted when Steve put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him in his tracks.

Steve's posture was casual, but Maggie could see how tightly his fingers dug in to the guy's shoulder. "I thought you wanted to make a statement?" he asked. His face was set in hard lines.

Steve held the now bright-red guy still as the four of them watched flames consume the fake-leather wallet. Maggie waited until the last possible moment to drop it on the ground, and took a few moments to enjoy the sight of the wallet going up in smoke.

When the flames burned out, Steve peeled his hand off the guy's shoulder and they all looked at him.

"I think you might think twice about taunting people you see as weaker than you," Steve said. His face could have been chiseled out of stone. Maggie could imagine the kind of statue he'd make – she'd call it _The Shield._

The guy's face was white and splotchy red, and he could only stare as Steve went to stand beside Maggie in front of the blackened hunk of wallet. His gaze lifted to Maggie's face.

"Now piss off," she said.

He turned on his heel and half jogged, half speed-walked away.

As soon as the guy left the alley Steve pulled out his own wallet, fished out all his money and offered it to the homeless man. The man eyed Steve cautiously, then accepted the notes with a quick reach of his fingers. There was dirt under his fingernails, and that small detail made something inside Maggie clench painfully.

She sat down right in the middle of the alley, a few feet away from the man, and his cautious gaze turned to her.

"Hey," she said.

He scratched his chin. "Hello."

She cocked her head. "What's your name? You seem to know mine."

His eyes narrowed incrementally. "George."

_Maybe not his real name, but it doesn't matter. _"Nice to meet you, George. What do you need?" She gestured to the money in his hand with a small, gentle smile. "Other than Captain America's cash."

George sniffed again and eyeballed her, clearly wary despite the enjoyment he'd shown in the wallet-burning. Maggie knew his kind, and she knew how their trust worked – it wasn't easily given, and it was very easily lost. She also knew that George and the people he shared the streets with often needed a whole lot more than money.

Steve watched Maggie and George eye each other for a few long moments, his face still etched from stone but beginning to display some confusion.

Eventually, George nodded and scratched the back of his neck. "There's a homeless shelter a couple blocks away from here."

"New Horizons," Steve said. "I know it."

George hunched. "They're no good there. They've been giving people shitty food and shitty beds. And they steal things. Tried to complain, they kicked me out saying I ought'a be grateful." He shifted and his eyes darted between them again. "And it might not be for me to say but it's… it's not a safe place for women. If you know what I mean."

"I do," Maggie murmured. "Thank you, George. Do you mind if I give you my contact details, in case you think of anything else?"

His lips quirked up. "I follow you on Twitter. If I think of anything I'll message you."

She returned his smile. "Sounds good. Can I follow you back?"

Once Maggie had got George's Twitter handle and checked that he was okay, Maggie and Steve walked out of the alley and back onto the main sidewalk, where New Yorkers strode obliviously past the two Avengers.

Maggie and Steve each took a long breath, then turned to look at each other.

Maggie took in Steve's straight shoulders and determined eyes. Something in the indignant, resolute expression on his face called to something thrumming under her own skin. She cocked her head at him. "Want to come to this shelter with me?"

His eyes gleamed. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

* * *

Steve and Maggie returned to the Avengers Facility in the early hours of the next morning. They had a quick, tired conversation in the garage, hugged one another, and then went to bed.

When Maggie crawled into bed beside Bucky, he grunted sleepily and rolled over.

"Wondering when you'd get back," he said, his voice scratchy. "What did you two get up to?"

Maggie pulled the duvet over herself and settled into her pillow. "Well it was weird at first," she murmured, "but after some light arson we ended up annexing one of the biggest homeless shelters in the city, then started a police investigation into this real asshole of a women's doctor, and then we saw an ad for an art and technology exhibition so we went to MoMA."

Bucky yawned. "I refuse to get worried about this."

She grinned and wriggled closer to him. "Not even a little bit?"

His eyes were closed as he replied: "One of you is bad enough, I'm sure that the two of you together will actually give me an embolism. So I'm going back to sleep instead."

"That's fair." She shifted closer to him and he wrapped his arm over her so they lay together with her cheek against his metal shoulder and his nose in her hair.

With Bucky's chest rising and falling steadily against hers, Maggie reflected on her day. Something about stopping that asshole taunting George had burned away the awkwardness between she and Steve, and once they got going it was as if they'd been friends for years. While they'd investigated the shelter and got in a fight with the company running it she and Steve had started exchanging stories about Bucky, comparing notes and laughing at the similarities between 1930s Brooklyn Bucky and twenty-first century post-HYDRA Bucky. Steve had shared memories about his childhood and all the scrapes he and Bucky had found themselves in, and confided that he was really glad Bucky had found love and happiness with Maggie.

But they didn't only talk about Bucky – on the way out of the police station Maggie had asked about her father, and listened with rapt attention as Steve told her about the excitable, brave, flawed Howard Stark that he had known. He told her about brave, beautiful Peggy, and Maggie told him about her childhood before HYDRA and what Tony used to be like. Steve seemed so much more comfortable with Maggie now that he wasn't talking to 'Bucky's girlfriend' or 'Tony's sister' or 'the Wyvern', but to _Maggie_. And when she made him laugh with her odd, deadpan jokes or startled him with one of her many strange bits of trivia, she caught a flash of relief in his face, followed by more laughter. Because this wasn't hard at all. It turned out that for Steve Rogers and Maggie Stark, being friends was easy.

They'd chatted about books, and art, and Steve gave her music recommendations from a wide variety of decades. On the way to MoMA they traded stories about missions they'd been on.

And Maggie had come away with a totally new understanding of Steve Rogers. Steve's sense of humor was much drier than Bucky's, steeped in a century of putting up with people's shit. He had the same dark twist to his humor that Maggie did, the kind you got when you fought through years of trauma and loss and found yourself amongst friends. He hid so much of himself behind a stoic expression – he hid grief, and loneliness, but also hidden was the Steve Rogers who was still very much a scrawny, brave artist from Brooklyn who didn't back down when he saw someone who needed help. Maggie finally felt like she knew the 'little' Steve, who she'd seen in black-and-white photos in the Smithsonian. She got the sense a lot of people forgot about _him_.

Maggie smiled to herself in the darkness of Bucky's bedroom, soaking in Bucky's warmth after a chaotic day of fighting crime and drinking coffee with Steve.

A few minutes later, when she thought Bucky was asleep, he kissed the top of her head and said: "'M glad you had fun, Meg."

She smiled into his chest. "You've got good taste in friends. And girlfriends."

She couldn't see his smile, but she heard it in the tilt of his next words: "Damn right I do."

* * *

**Sorry it's not the Wyvern, but I hope you enjoyed it all the same!**


	11. An Avengers Outing

**An Avengers Outing**

**A/N: (Sorry this is really long)**

**Sorry for the long wait all – I've been working on a Steve/OC and generally figuring out what to do with this collection of one shots. So obviously, the previous one shots have all been based on how things got left at the ending of Infinity War. A lot has changed in Endgame, and a lot has changed for Maggie in the Endgame arc of ****_The Wyvern. _****I wasn't sure how to reconcile that, until I basically shrugged and said 'what the hell, the one shots aren't about an overarching plot'.**

**I've got lots of ideas for what to do with ****_All The Little Lights_**** so if you wouldn't mind stretching your disbelief a little, we're just going to pretend from this point that everything in Endgame has happened (Tony and Pepper got married and had Morgan, New Asgard, Carol showing up, Maggie losing her leg, Bruce's Hulk transformation, anything else I've forgotten). BUT everyone is still alive. Because this is a happily ever after AU! Also Steve's not old. The Facility is still standing, and Tony, Pepper, and Morgan split their time between their house and the facility. **

**(I have also gone back to edit some minor details of past chapters – specifically about New Asgard). **

**So for now, basically the previous chapters are a 'what if Infinity War had a happy ending', and this is 'what if Endgame happy ending.' **

**If you're happy with that, great! I didn't want to change too much in the previous one shots because I know you guys enjoyed them. ****_But_**** if you would prefer that I completely rewrite the previous one shots to accommodate Endgame (I believe I could, but a lot would change), then I'm happy to do that too. Let me know! **

**This one shot's a shorty but a goody.**

**CW: Homophobia (it's brief)**

* * *

"Alright, team. Are you ready?"

"No."

"I want to go to bed."

"I still do not understand the concept of what's required of us. Asgardians do not-"

Tony stepped in for an increasingly agitated Steve and held up both hands. "Listen up. When we fight bad guys, we have to hold a press conference to update the public. That's how it works now. Just sit there and look pretty, and Steve and I will handle the press. Okay?"

The Avengers exchanged glances, before muttering "okay," as one. Thor still looked confused, but he shrugged agreeably and adjusted his Asgardian tunic. He'd swung by to join the mission in between negotiating diplomatic treaties for New Asgard (now that Earth was more settled they were hoping to get an embassy), and his adventures with the Guardians. Pepper had convinced him that Avengers press conferences would help him with his public image.

The PR liaison gave them the go ahead and the Avengers trooped into the press room. There was a long table set up at the front of the room for them, and one by one they took their seats: first Steve and Tony, in the middle, then Natasha, Maggie, Bucky, Vision, Wanda, Sam, Rhodey, Bruce, Carol, and Thor. Carol had only come on the mission because she was in the area - normally she left the Earth stuff to them. Scott was trying to find a steady day job. Clint had helped out with the mission but after sharing a few drinks with the team (and destroying Maggie in a game of pool) he'd headed back to his farm.

_Lucky bastard_, Maggie thought as she tried not to wince in the bright flashing lights. Press conferences still set her teeth on edge: bright lights, loud voices, starched clothes… it all grated her nerves. But Bucky's warm, solid presence to her left was steadying (though she could sense similar anxieties lurking under his blank face), and she found a surprising amount of comfort in having Natasha to her right – the former assassin was as calm as a rock in front of the reporters, as if nothing could touch her.

The PR liaison shushed the crowd of reporters, and Tony and Steve got the press conference started. Maggie listened to their prepared statement as she breathed through her nerves, taking reassurance in the bare facts. The team had been called out to deal with a terrorist group in the Midwest, and after a game of highly-weaponized hide and seek in Louisville they'd captured all the assailants and handed them over to law enforcement. The worst injury the Avengers had suffered was a shrapnel graze to Sam's neck. Bruce had gotten legitimately angry when he saw Sam hurt, though, and he raged through the battlefield in a startling echo of how the Hulk used to be. He'd stayed in control, though. All in all, this was exactly the result they hoped for.

Steve cleared his throat and told the press they'd be taking questions, and hands flew up the room over. Everyone knew by now that shouting didn't work on the Captain, he usually called on those who politely and patiently waited to be called.

The questions were mostly about the current terror alert and the consequent judicial process, and Maggie started to relax into her seat. The long table packed with Avengers eased into the dialogue with the press, most of them nodding along as Steve or Tony took each reporter's questions. Carol still butted heads with Steve and Tony for leadership from time to time, but she seemed happy to leave the press stuff to them. Maggie made eye contact with Vision at the other end of the table, and they smiled at one another. Thor and Bruce chatted quietly.

And then Steve pointed to a reporter Maggie didn't recognize, a middle-aged guy with dyed black hair, wearing a grey suit. He stood up and eyed the Avengers, coming to rest on Steve.

"It's come out that in this mission that several Avengers were assigned to stand guard around a shelter known as the" – he checked his notepad – "'Louisville Sunrise House', which this paper has discovered is a shelter for homosexual youth."

Maggie frowned. She remembered the shelter – Wanda, Rhodey, and Sam had been sent to protect it. _Did something go wrong?_

"That's correct," Steve said, "we–"

"As well as this preferential treatment," the reporter continued, "this paper has also discovered that there are multiple homosexual organizations and groups that benefit from Avengers-related grants, particularly those funded by Tony and Margaret Stark. Does this mean that the Avengers reject family values?"

His question was followed by several long, heavy moments of silence. Reporters around the man gave him side-eyes, but most watched the group of people at the long table at the front of the room. The man who'd asked the question just raised his eyebrows and watched them, as if he'd caught them in a lie.

The Avengers went from collectively confused, to shocked, and then very rapidly to incensed. Maggie noticed hackles rise and hands clench up and down the table. Bruce's sharp intake of breath could be heard over the mics. She could swear she heard Carol breathe _what the fuck? _They all leaned forward, but Maggie got to her microphone first.

"Would you like to clarify what you mean by 'family values', buddy?" she said lowly and dangerously in the prickling silence. Her pulse roared in her ears. "Because I'm a bisexual woman with a large, loving family and I work every day to protect families in this country and around the world."

A new silence fell. This one felt so different from the first. Maggie sensed her words get absorbed around the room, saw eyes widen and heads turn – the man who'd asked the question went promptly red. Her teammates all turned to look at her.

Her breath stopped in her chest.

And then the room erupted. The previously dormant cameras exploded with flashes of blinding white light, and every single person in the press group threw up their hands and started shouting questions. As the wall of noise and light blew against her, Maggie belatedly realized that she'd just come out to the entire world. She stared numbly at the crowd for a second, then looked around at her family.

She didn't know what she'd have done if she saw judgement. Some of them already knew but her family was so much bigger now, and this was more than a few quiet words between friends. But when she took in her teammates faces she saw only affection and trust, every single Avenger showing her with their eyes that they supported her in this. And then those faces shifted to _pride._

Her eyes fell on Bucky's face last, and his blue-gray eyes glimmered: _Do you want to get out of here?_ She minutely shook her head, and under the table his hand rested on her knee, just above where her leg ended in a stump. _I'm here_.

But the crowd was still shouting, and Maggie had no doubt that her face was already on websites and TV screens the world over, so her gaze lifted to the rest of the team again. At the other end of the table, Vision met her eye. She saw something like a question there, and she nodded. _Whatever it is, yes._

Vision turned to his microphone and politely cleared his throat. The din in the room lowered a little – not completely, but just enough for him to lean in and say:

"I might remind everyone here that the group we fought in this mission had previously expressed an intention to attack vulnerable civilians _including _LGBTQ+ people and several racial minorities, so we decided to distribute our forces accordingly." This mostly got drowned out, but Maggie was glad it had been said. _I should've said that, _she thought numbly. But Vision wasn't done: "I'd also like to express that I have chosen to go by male pronouns but I have no gender preference when it comes to romantic interest. Which I believe makes me pansexual," he added with a smile.

Wanda laid her hand over his on the table, and they smiled at each another.

Thor, who'd up until now been doing as he was told (sitting there and looking pretty), leaned into his microphone, shrugged, and said: "Asgardians' natural preferences are not bound by gender."

The volume in the room amped up exponentially. Maggie found herself grinning. To her right, Natasha smiled mysteriously at the shouting journalists.

Carol smiled at Thor then turned to the flashing cameras and said: "Yeah I'm not straight either, if that's something anyone here cares about." Her words were an easy drawl, but for a moment she glanced at the original reporter and the hardness in her eyes threatened a painful, drawn out death.

Sam had apparently decided it was his turn: "I've got gay and lesbian relatives, and they're some of the most loving and family-oriented people I've ever met." He eyed the reporter who'd asked the original question. "It's 2019, my guy. I thought we'd cancelled homophobia by now."

"Right?" Tony added. He squinted at the reporter. "No thank you. Next." Somehow, with those simple words, he managed to convey a threat. Maggie didn't know how he'd done it but the reporter cringed backwards, and seemed to be afraid to even look in Maggie's direction. Or maybe it was Bucky's murder-glaring that was doing the trick.

"Seconded," Bruce said, his face for a single moment as menacing as Maggie had ever seen it. And then he leaned back, as mild as ever.

The room still roared with questions, but Maggie felt as if solid ground had been placed under her feet. Bucky, Tony and Carol glared at anyone who looked like they might say something bad about Maggie, while the rest of the Avengers sat casually in their chairs as if they hadn't just changed the face of the world.

Steve finally cleared his throat, gaining everyone's attention. "If it isn't clear," he said wryly, "the Avengers are united in completely supporting and celebrating people of all sexual orientations. If you've got a problem with that, well…" he left a heavy pause, and looked pointedly at the superpowered people around him. "You can take it up with us."

* * *

They tried to continue the press conference as per usual after that, but it was hopeless in the end, so Steve cut it short.

When they all stood up to go, Maggie didn't let go of Bucky's hand. The public had already sort of known they were together, but they still didn't give any outward signs. But today Maggie met his eyes, and Bucky leaned in to kiss her cheek.

"I'm so proud of you, doll," he'd whispered. And then they walked out of the press room, hand in hand.

Now, they still stood hand in hand in the Avengers common room, surrounded by their team mates. Maggie felt shaky and overwhelmed, but her grip on Bucky's hand kept her centered and the still-supportive faces of her team were like oxygen after all the shouting in the press room.

They'd all silently agreed that they needed an impromptu meeting after everything that just went down, but no one seemed to know what to say.

So Maggie turned to Thor. "Is that true?" What you said about Asgardians?"

He nodded. "Of course. I was very confused when I first came to Midgard and learned that there are gender preferences here." He strode across the room toward her and put a hand on her shoulder. His eyes on her were intense. "I've since learned of the prejudices and divides of this realm, and I wish to congratulate you on your bravery."

The tears that had been waiting since she first spoke at the conference sprang into her eyes. "Thanks, Thor," she said in a choked voice.

She looked from the alien king to the rest of them, more united here in this common room than they ever had been on the battlefield. Vision and Wanda stood hand in hand, Carol smiled, Sam and Bruce smiled softly at her, her brother shot her a covert thumbs up. She smiled and tried to blink away her tears. "Thanks to all of you, actually."

"You don't need to thank us," Sam said. "I just hope we didn't hijack your coming out, I know it's a very personal–"

"No, not at all," she grinned. "It's good to know I'm not alone."

"'Course you're not," said Bucky, his eyes shining as he looked at her. She remembered how it had been so easy to come out to him all those years ago, just another thing she'd discovered about herself. And he'd kissed her and loved her and that had been that.

"That's right," Steve said firmly. Maggie glanced over at him and smiled: he'd never looked more like an overprotective big brother.

"We're a big, gay, happy family," Tony said. Rhodey punched him. "Wait, we should go to Pride next year! That would be so much fun! I look great in drag."

At that moment Pepper burst into the room, breathless and her hair askew. She glanced around at them all and then ran right up to Maggie and threw her arms around her. "I'm so proud of you!" she exclaimed. Then she pulled away and held Maggie at arm's length. "Now let's get to work."

* * *

Once more, the world collectively lost its mind because of Maggie.

Of course there were horrible people who said horrible things, but the vast majority of the reaction was positive. Approval for the Avengers shot through the roof overnight, and Steve started to talk seriously with Tony about going to the Pride Festival next year. Artistic renditions of various Avengers wearing rainbow outfits gained huge popularity. Queer people of all ages wrote messages of support, thanks, and hope. Bucky was moved to tears by the story of two gay men who'd served in World War II together and found love, who thanked Steve from their nursing home for his support and explained how much it meant to them.

There was an outpouring of support across the world, which Maggie received with overwhelming emotion back at the facility, surrounded by her family. Vision received an outpouring of love that he'd never experienced before. Thor had the unusual experience of people celebrating his sexuality, which had always been considered completely normal for him until very recently. His diplomatic efforts gained a lot of traction.

It was a very emotional few days at the Avengers Facility, in which much hot chocolate was consumed and many hugs were given and received.

Maggie sat down with Morgan over a wooden jigsaw puzzle and explained to her niece what bisexual meant, and why it meant Maggie was in the news all the time lately. Morgan at first seemed concerned that Maggie was telling her that she was going to leave Bucky for a girl, but when Maggie clarified Morgan just said "Oh. Okay. Can we have smoothies?"

Maggie kissed her on the forehead and went to go make smoothies.

One Twitter exchange went viral – a conservative broadcaster had tweeted: _Disgusting pandering to identity politics by the Avengers today. I'll no longer be supporting them._

He had consequently been retweeted by a famous gay actress: _Then it's a good thing your support means jack shit to them. Because otherwise sure, you'd get your way and get to keep being homophobic. But you'd also be dead. _

As far as celebrity coming-outs went, Maggie thought, she felt very lucky.

* * *

Maggie got a flood of emails in response to the press conference, but one subject line stood out to her: _Did I make out with you at a club in Townsville?_

Curled up on her couch while Bucky made coffee in the kitchen, Maggie clicked on the email.

_Dear Ms Stark,_

_I know this might seem like a really strange question, but ever since your very first press conference a couple years ago I kinda had this feeling like I knew you (I swear I'm not a crazy stalker)._

_My name's Sarah Hannigan, and four years ago I made out with a really hot brunette lady at a club in Townsville. Her name was Maggie, and she had a friend with her called Bucky. And ever since yourself and Mr Barnes have been in the public eye, I've kind of thought that my Maggie and Bucky must have just been a crazy coincidence. But you both look REALLY similar to the people I met, and I thought about it and realized you guys were on the run at the time, and after your recent press conference (congrats btw) I thought I'd go crazy if I didn't try to settle this question. My other friends from the night think it's weird too._

_So Ms Stark, I am VERY sorry if you have no idea what I'm talking about but I have to know – did I make out with you four years ago? And if so, hi! That was really awesome! And secondly, do you maybe want my number?_

\- _Sarah Hannigan_

(Attached file: a selfie of a tanned woman with curly brown hair, laughing green eyes, and a delicately pointed nose.)

Maggie laughed out loud and quickly reread the email.

"Bucky!" she called. He stuck his head in from the kitchen. "Come and read this!"

* * *

_Email from: margaretastark**at**gmail**dot**com_

_Subject: Yes. Yes you did._

_Hi Sarah!_

_How nice to hear from you again. Yes, we did make out in a club in Townsville four years ago. I remember you were wearing a shirt that said 'brains, beauty, booty,' and your friends lent me their makeup._

_I had a very nice night, so thank you. I was trying to figure a lot of stuff out at the time so it was good to have fun and let loose. _

_So, mystery solved I guess! As for getting your number, I'm actually in a relationship but I'm always up for more friendships! I'd love to go back to Australia some time._

_Best,_

_Maggie Stark  
_(Attached file: a selfie of Maggie blowing a kiss with Bucky waving his metal hand in the background).

_PS: I don't mind if you tell anyone. I'm all about visibility and if it ends up with more ladies making out with ladies then I'd say that's a pretty solid contribution to the world._

* * *

**I got the idea for Asgardians being naturally bisexual from another fic but lord help me I cannot remember which one, so if anyone knows please hit me up so I can cite my sources!**

**No set update schedule unfortunately, I'm just posting when I've got time x**


	12. Human

**Human**

**CW: Disassociation, panic attacks, memories of trauma.**

* * *

The room was small. About nine feet by five, lined by blank metal shelves frosted with ice. Maggie paced the length of the room once the mission was over, her heart clenching at the sharp bite of cold in the air and the blank metal door with its round, thick glass window.

The crime syndicate the warehouse belonged to had used this freezer room to store the temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals they smuggled into the country. And when the Avengers had arrived to take down their operation, one of their hired mercenaries had managed to lock Bucky inside this room for two whole minutes.

Maggie eyed the crumpled door and the deep finger gouges in the metal. There was a smear of blood in a dent in the wall. She reached out and traced the shape of knuckles. Her breath was white vapor in the air.

Slowly, she moved the door until it was almost shut. The cold pressed against her exposed skin, making her ears and the tip of her nose burn, and she lifted her gaze to the round glass window with its frost-laced edges. She could just see her reflection in the glass.

She closed her eyes.

Maggie had gone to find Bucky at the end of the mission and discovered him outside the warehouse on the gravel, clutching his hair. He'd flinched at the sound of her footsteps, and when she approached he scrambled away, his eyes wild and his face deathly pale. He'd looked into her wide eyes and groaned "_no_".

She'd seen in his frantic blue eyes that he was seeing another her, another time.

"Maggie." Steve's voice was soft in her commpiece. "He's on the Quinjet now, we think we're ready to take off."

"Is he… is he ready to see me?"

A short pause followed. Maggie leant her forehead against the frozen glass.

"Yeah," Steve eventually replied. "Let's go home."

* * *

Bucky kept to himself on the flight home, squirrely and flinching at the slightest noise. He did shoot Maggie a heartwrenching, guilt-ridden look that nearly made her burst into tears, but he couldn't bring himself to speak.

Tony kept his arm firm around Maggie's shoulders the whole flight back.

After undergoing the mandatory physical and psychiatric assessment at the facility, Bucky retreated. For a whole day he kept to his room, taking long showers so hot that he came out with his skin lobster red. He allowed Maggie to stay with him, and though he was still mostly nonverbal she could see relief in his eyes whenever he looked up and saw her. That night Maggie intended to sleep on the couch but he softly asked her to come to bed. They kept the heating on all night and wrapped themselves in blankets and each other, and though Maggie was sweaty and uncomfortable Bucky managed at least a few hours of sleep before he woke screaming.

The others noticed his reaction, of course, but they didn't say anything that wasn't helpful. When Bucky walked into the common room with dark rings under his eyes they didn't coddle him, but made him coffee and brought him gently into the conversation. Even Tony was nicer than usual. Steve didn't hover, but he was there for Bucky whenever he needed him. When Morgan showed up in the afternoon after school, she drew Bucky out of his shell by chattering about her history class and playing with the floating, glowing algae Maggie had brought her from space.

Bucky got better over the days, and discussed the incident with his therapist, but he was still utterly silent on the subject with everyone else. Maggie held him close or gave him space whenever he needed either, and tried to shake her own feeling of… lingering horror. That was what had struck her deep to her core when she'd seen Bucky's face like that. Like he was right back in those cold, bloody years of waking, death, and sleeping.

* * *

Three weeks later, Maggie woke up disoriented from an unremembered nightmare. She rolled over, saw Bucky snoring into his pillow, and used the rush of fondness to calm her racing heart. She had a perfectly normal day planned, and the analysts didn't have any missions on the horizon.

Steve dropped a glass at breakfast. Maggie flinched at the noise and then, as the others teased the pink-cheeked Steve, her eyes caught on the glinting edges of the broken glass.

She stayed behind after breakfast to watch the news with Pepper, before washing up her dishes and heading to the workshop. On her way out of the common room she heard a snatch of Russian from the TV.

Around mid morning Maggie and Tony got called out of the workshop to the science labs, where Bruce and Jane Foster had something to show them: Thor had been providing them with extraterrestrial soil and rock samples from his journeys with the Guardians, mostly as a hobby, and they had uncovered some exciting readings. Maggie helped Bruce operate a Bunsen burner to incinerate one of the glowing rock samples, and when they turned off the device the fire flickered behind her eyes. She blinked, but the afterimage of flames continued to burn against her retinas.

In the corridor outside the labs on her way to lunch, Maggie passed a nurse walking by with a tray full of needles.

Bucky met her on the way to the employee mess hall, ready with a teasing quip, and they strode down the corridor together while he told her about what he and Steve had been working on with the analysts.

And then Bucky touched her back.

For five seconds Maggie's mind was _gone. _She would never remember those five seconds, which wasn't much compared to the swathes of missing time from the first twenty five years of her life, but was an eternity now that she was years away from HYDRA and free.

When the five seconds were gone and consciousness returned, Maggie realized she was… on the ground. Crouched. And in the dark.

Maggie blinked, and saw metal. _Wings. _Her wings were out and draped around her like a protective shell. Her chest heaved, her heart pounded, and her elbow ached.

Slowly, carefully, she parted her wings and peeked out into the light beyond.

Bucky was there, and her breath rushed from her lungs.

"Your name is Margaret Stark," he said, low and certain. "You're in the Avengers Facility. I'm Bucky, and you're safe. There's no danger here."

After a few seconds Maggie's wings parted fully, folding into her back, and she shakily got to her feet. Her metal prosthetic scraped on the floor and made shivers dance up and down her spine. Her eyes darted to the perimeters of the corridor and the exits – she trusted Bucky, but she needed to be sure. Then she looked back to him.

A bruise was blooming on his jaw. For a second Maggie merely stared at it, confused, until she connected the swollen red stain with the ache in her elbow. She traced it back: the blackness, the fear, the touch on her shoulder.

Her face must have showed something truly horrible, because Bucky blanched and his hands rose. "No, doll – it's okay. It's okay."

But she shook her head and backtracked, her wings sliding back into their moorings. Her heart was a pounding drum in her chest. Bucky took a step toward her, his face wrenched, and she turned on her heel and ran.

* * *

As she ran horror surged through her veins and flooded her chest, a raging whirlpool of choking emotion.

_HYDRA was five years ago_, she thought frantically as her feet pounded against the ground. _I'm meant to be fixed, people trust me now. _Her breathing lanced sharp in her throat. _I'm an Avenger, I'm a _person. _What does it mean if I can still lose control like that? What does it mean that I can hurt someone, let alone _Bucky?

She ran instinctively in the direction of the cells. _What if it had been someone more fragile? _Her stomach flipped. _Morgan._

Just as she reached the block of reinforced, highly-monitored cells, Bucky caught up with her. He skidded to a halt in front of her, blocking her path, and stared her down.

"Don't you dare punish yourself like that," he said, his tone so forceful that she actually took a step back. "You don't belong in a cage."

Suddenly motionless, Maggie was struck by how loud her own breathing was – her shaking gasps echoed off the corridor walls. She trembled and her hands instinctively clenched.

Bucky kept his posture non-combative as he dropped into a murmur: "Come with me. I promise I won't touch you."

Her knees shook. That promise was for her: because he knew better than most how terrified of herself she was. It was a promise that said _you won't hurt anyone._

She nodded.

* * *

Bucky walked out to the wide lawn of the facility, the sun gleaming gold on his arm, and Maggie followed. He walked out to the middle of the expanse of grass and stopped.

Maggie stopped a few feet away from him and the shivers chasing up and down her spine begin to ease; there were no walls boxing her in out here, just the sky which stretched wide and blue around her. Sunshine streamed onto her face and a breeze cooled her sweaty forehead.

Bucky met Maggie's eyes. "Breathing," he said.

Maggie closed her eyes and went through the breathing exercises she'd taught herself years ago. Long, deep breaths in through her nose, slow exhale through her mouth. _Breathe in the good, breathe out the bad._ She tensed and relaxed her muscles, starting with her toes and working up to her face. She unfurled her wings and let the sensation of the breeze against her metal synapses calm her down. After a few more moments, she kicked off her shoes and let her bare feet (well, foot) sink into the grass.

When she opened her eyes again Bucky was still in front of her. He cocked his head. "Talking?"

She nodded. "I should."

His mouth quirked up. "Alright. But no apologizing."

Her eyes rested on his bruise: the swelling was already going down, but it was a nasty purple color. "I need to."

"You don't."

"No, Bucky, I… I need to." She met his eyes so he could see the desperate, sickened guilt swirling inside her. After a moment, he sighed and inclined his head.

Maggie stepped toward him and touched his jaw, her fingers gentle against the inflamed skin. Her gut twisted.

"Bucky… I am so, _so _sorry. I never wanted to hurt you ever again, and I…" her voice became strangled. "I couldn't stop myself. That _shouldn't be an excuse._ What if I–"

"No what ifs," he said softly. "This is not you breaking, Meg. This is you healing."

"It doesn't feel like it."

His eyes flicked up to hers, and the determination in his gaze took her breath away. "I promise it is."

Maggie could tell that he wanted to touch her, to reassure her that she was whole and human, but he didn't move. She was glad for it. She still felt shaky and breakable, and though she felt calmer after the breathing exercises her skin was still crawling.

She breathed out. "Can we sit down?"

They sat together on the warm summer grass where insects flitted and the sun shone down on them. Maggie's wings brushed against the grass. Bucky leaned back with his hands on the ground and his face tilted up to the sky, squinting against the sun.

Bucky talked first. He finally told her about the dark places he had gone to when that metal door trapped him in a frozen box. He talked about what he remembered of all the times he'd been cryofrozen by HYDRA, what had gone through the Soldier's head in the seconds before they froze him. He told her a memory: the Wyvern's dark eyes boring into his, flickering with unsurfaced emotions, before frost encroached on his vision and the world went dark. Maggie cried with Bucky, and they ended up lying side by side on the grass with their hands clasped.

When it was her turn, Maggie retraced her day: the dozen small triggers that had crept up in the back of her mind before exploding. As Bucky talked her through her mounting anxiety, Maggie reflected that she needed to pay more attention to herself, to the trouble brewing in her own mind. She'd known she was a bit off kilter today, but she'd just carried on.

"I should have taken a break," she murmured. "Done things that made me feel safe, instead of on edge. Relaxing."

Bucky squeezed her hand and told her about what he planned to do from now on to remind himself that he wasn't trapped in his past.

Their conversation reminded Maggie of sleepless nights they'd spent in forgotten safehouses, reminding each other to breathe, to remember, to be kind to themselves. _You're a person. _She held Bucky's hand tight, feeling impossibly lucky that they'd come so far and seen so much, and still had each other.

* * *

Tony and Steve came outside to check on them half an hour later, finding them lying together on the grass with their eyes red and their limbs drained of energy. F.R.I.D.A.Y. had kept everyone updated on the situation. Tony had wanted to help immediately, but he and the others saw that Maggie and Bucky had it covered and left them alone.

Tony and Steve brought snacks. Maggie and Bucky sat up and accepted the chips and energy drinks with much gratitude, though they were too tired to do much more than mumble 'thank you' before they started eating.

Tony cast a suspicious look at the ground before gingerly sitting down beside his sister. "You up for a hug, Maggot?"

She swallowed her mouthful of chips. "I… I don't want to hurt you." She felt more or less like she occupied her own head now, but after a dissociative fugue, panic attack and her current state of exhaustion she wanted to err on the side of caution.

Tony cocked his head. "Do you think you will?"

"I really hope not."

"Let's give it a go." Tony opened his arms and Maggie leaned in to hug him. His arms were gentle around her back, and after a moment of tense panic Maggie eased into it. His dark suit had been warmed by the sun, and she buried her face in his shoulder to let the warmth wash through her.

When she pulled away a few moments later, she looked over to see Steve hand Bucky an ice pack. Steve caught Maggie's guilty look and his eyes softened.

"How do you feel about two hugs?" he asked.

She smiled shakily and nodded, and soon found herself laughing at the way Steve tentatively, earnestly, wrapped his massive arms around her. It was the strangest hug she'd ever had the pleasure to receive, and she squeezed him tightly to show her thanks.

Once Maggie had been thoroughly hugged and fed she flopped back on the grass, feeling loose-limbed and sleepy. Bucky sat beside her, running his metal fingers through the grass.

Tony got to his feet. "Are you two staying out here?"

"Don't think we're ready to go inside just yet," Maggie sighed.

"Why is that?" Tony asked. There was no judgement or annoyance in his voice, just curiosity.

Maggie waved at Bucky, and he explained for her. "Walls. Canned air. Hard surfaces." The corner of his mouth ticked up. "People."

"Fair enough," Tony agreed. But he and Steve didn't walk away, just stood there watching them for a few more moments. Maggie tilted her head so she could see them, and noticed that they were trading a meaning-loaded glance.

"What?" she asked.

Tony looked down at her and put his hands on his hips. "I was just…" he cocked his head. "When Steve and I were looking for you two, we weren't – or at least I wasn't – expecting to find… this." He gestured to the two of them reclining in the sun with their fingers tangled. Tony ran a hand through his hair. "I was expecting… disassociation, lack of identity and memory, and…" he sighed. "To be honest, after everything I'd discovered I didn't have a lot of hope of finding much human left."

Maggie felt like she should flinch, but she just felt sad.

Tony continued. "And then we found you, and… do you remember, Maggie? That first time we spoke in the helicopter? You asked if I was alright. And then you asked if _Rhodey _was alright. I was so surprised that you had that in you. Little did I know that you had a whole _person _in you, all… funny, and brave, and… I've run out of adjectives, Rogers, help me out."

Steve seemed happy to continue: "I think what Tony's saying is that you both somehow, incredibly, beat all the odds. No one expected that much from you, and we were wrong for that. So I think you can forgive yourselves a few bad days."

Bucky's fingers tightened around Maggie's.

Maggie sort of felt like hugging them again, but after a few more friendly words Tony and Steve headed back into the facility.

She watched them go. "We've got good people, Bucky."

He rolled onto his side to face her. "We sure do."

* * *

For the rest of the afternoon Maggie and Bucky lay on the Avengers Facility lawn, talking lazily in the sun and picking out shapes in the clouds.

Other Avengers came out to check on them throughout the afternoon with offerings of snacks, drinks, and sunblock. Some just drifted past to squint up at the sky and share a few kind words. Vision brought out Maggie's iPod so they could listen to music, and told them "I am consistently humbled by both of your capacities to overcome trauma and better the world around you," which made Maggie cry and ended up in yet _another _hug. Pepper came out with Morgan after picking her up from school and didn't go back inside until Morgan had gotten both of them to laugh. Maggie watched her niece gently trace the mechanical patterns of her prosthetic leg and thought _I'm healing, not breaking. __I will never hurt you. _

Thor sat cross legged with them in the grass, looking up at the blank sky, and told them about the complex and beautiful realms out there beyond the blue.

* * *

Two weeks later, Jane blew something up in the lab and Bruce had nearly the closest thing he'd had to a 'Hulk-out' since he'd fully melded with the Hulk. Darcy (who'd been appointed lab manager) yelled at Jane, and unseen by the rest of them Bruce slipped out of the lab and walked outside.

Maggie and Bucky saw him sitting alone in the middle of the lawn, his head bowed, and without exchanging a word they brought him green tea in a massive thermos, and a pile of cookies.

When they approached and set down the offerings Bruce smiled tiredly at them, not even pretending that the smile reached his eyes. They helped him eat the cookies, and a few hours later Bruce went to his room to go to sleep.

* * *

Three weeks later it was Rhodey – nightmares of falling. Bucky sat with him on the grass under the ink black sky.

* * *

When the whirling thoughts and feelings crowded inside the facility got too much Wanda would go out to the middle of the lawn and just stand there, her face turned to the sky, until the red light sparking around her fingers softened to a glow.

* * *

One cool Saturday morning Natasha brought Bucky and Maggie to the lawn. Not to talk, but to teach them ballet positions. The redhead calmly explained the moves and showed them how to hold their arms and position their feet, and gradually the hardness in her eyes eased. When Maggie flowed from third to fourth position, her bare feet sliding over the grass, and received a smile from the former assassin, she reflected that this lesson somehow communicated so much more than words could.

Sam came out to the lawn at the end of the lesson and looked around, taking in the wide expanse of grass and the way the white buildings of the facility seemed small. He turned to the three of them standing breathless and sweaty in the grass.

"This is a good spot you've got here."

"Never had a place like this growing up," Bucky replied.

Maggie knew he was referring to growing up in the city, to being fenced in by crowded buildings and roads, but she saw Natasha's eyes darken a little in response to the statement.

She sighed. "I don't think any of us did." She looked Natasha in the eyes. "But we do now."

* * *

Sorry this wasn't quite as feel good as the others! I've had lots of great suggestions for one shots, I might not get to them any time soon but I promise they're on my list 😊

In the meantime, if you're not aware I've started a new story! Go check out 'The Siren' for tiny kid Steve Rogers and his scheming lady love, set in the tumultuous years of the 1930s and 40s.

Sneak peek for the next one shot (not sure when I'll post it):  
_Maggie had overheard a conversation between Wanda and Vision in the kitchen:_

_"I can sense… another mind in the facility. One I can't account for."_

_"An intruder?"_

_"I'm not sure. This mind is… difficult to read. I can't catch any thoughts familiar to me, and I'm very confused but I don't think the mind is dangerous. I don't know what to do."_

_"Stay alert to your surroundings. And the moment you sense any danger you can alert F.R.I.D.A.Y. or any of the rest of us, you know that."_

_"… I know."_


	13. Artemis

**Artemis**

After a long day of Stark Industries meetings Maggie drove back into the Avengers Facility and strolled toward her and Bucky's quarters, saying hi to various Avengers as she came across them. Peter had come by for a training session with Natasha, but once Maggie was satisfied that he was likely to survive the session she continued over to her place. She and Bucky spent about half their time at the facility these days, and the other half at their house on the lake.

When she opened the door she called "I'm back! How was Brooklyn?" and dropped her bag on the entryway table. Sighing, she walked into the living area.

Bucky stood in the middle of the living room, his hands behind his back and a guilty expression on his face as he looked up at her.

Maggie's eyes narrowed. "What."

Bucky blew out a breath, winced, and then slowly brought his hands from behind his back.

A few seconds of silence passed.

"Is that a dog," Maggie said.

Bucky nodded carefully, his eyes on her face. "It is."

The dog in question was actually a puppy, cradled on its back in Bucky's hands. Maggie had read up on dog breeds a few years ago so she was fairly sure she was looking at a Doberman Pinscher; it had a glossy black and brown coat, big dark eyes, floppy ears and paws way too big for its legs. Speaking of which…

"Is that a _three-legged _dog."

"Yes."

The dog's front right leg was missing, its chest a smooth curve where there should have been a leg. The dog didn't seem to mind: it wriggled curiously in Bucky's hands with its big floppy paws flailing, burying its wet nose in Bucky's metal hand and making little _arf _noises.

Maggie found herself unconsciously moving forward, fascinated by the excitable little animal. She liked animals, that was something she'd discovered about herself years ago. Ever since Bucky first taught her how to pet a dog she'd been perfectly happy greeting dogs, cats, and even police horses when she came across them.

She approached Bucky and reached out to the puppy. It flung its single foreleg up to bare its soft stomach, so Maggie placed her palm on it and scratched. The puppy wriggled again so it could press its nose against Maggie's hand, then opened its mouth to trap her thumb between its baby teeth. It didn't bite, just held its little teeth against her skin and licked the pad of her finger. Maggie noted that the dog was a girl. She then traced her fingers over the little nub where a leg must once have been.

The puppy was warm under her hand, and as Maggie kept scratching her she yawned, mouth wide and eyes screwed shut.

Maggie looked up at Bucky, who was grinning from ear to ear. When he saw her looking he tried to stop but he couldn't quite hide the smile.

"Why is there a dog?"

The puppy wriggled again, and Bucky gently set her on the ground. Maggie watched the puppy amble away on three legs, the back legs propelling her forward and the front one hopping to keep up. As Maggie watched the puppy she fell forward, rolled, then got back to her feet to keep exploring. She sniffed Maggie's right shoe, which housed her nanotech prosthetic foot.

Bucky opened and closed his mouth. "There was… I was walking around Brooklyn, and they had this rescue shelter and I don't even know why I went in, but…" Maggie looked from Bucky's face and back to the floppy, falling over dog. The puppy sat so far back on her hindquarters that she almost fell over, and looked up at Maggie with those big dark eyes. Bucky shifted his feet and she looked back. She wasn't sure who had bigger puppy eyes – him or the dog.

He swallowed. "I'm sorry I didn't ask you beforehand, and I know there's a rule about no animals at the facility–"

"We're keeping her," Maggie said.

He blinked. "Oh. You're sure? I know this is a lot of responsibility, and I wanted to make it clear that you don't have to look after her if you don't want to, but I hoped… I hoped she could be _our _dog."

Maggie met his wide, hopeful eyes for a few moments before crouching down to scoop up the puppy. She was warm and soft in her hands – and very wriggly. "She is our dog," Maggie said firmly. When she looked back to Bucky he was beaming again. "What's her name?"

"They were callin' her Artemis down at the shelter. They reckon she's about six weeks old, she's had all her shots and has a chip – which is apparently something they do with dogs in the future."

"You know you're allowed to call it the _present _now," she said wryly, then looked down at the dog. "Artemis? Like the Greek goddess?"

Bucky shrugged. "I thought it was a good name."

"I agree." Maggie smiled at Artemis for the first time, and scratched around her ears. Artemis's ears flopped back. Maggie let out a breath and marveled at the feeling of her mind adjusting to this new change. Her conceptualization of her and Bucky's life shifted as she stood with the puppy in her arms, her thoughts already abuzz with things to research, items to buy, vets to find. She ran her hand over Artemis's side. "The leg?"

Bucky dangled his fingers over Artemis's nose while the puppy tried her best to lick him. "They said someone found her at a dump when she was just a week old. They think she was born with all four legs but… something happened, and she got abandoned." Maggie looked up into his face and took in the darkness there.

"And then you took her home," she said softly.

"I like that. Home."

She smiled. "Can't go on the run with a puppy, handsome. I think we might be stuck here."

The corners of his eyes crinkled. "Can't think of anything I'd like more." He leaned in and they kissed, with the wriggling puppy in between their bodies. Maggie broke the kiss with a grin when Artemis closed her teeth around her hand again.

"You did mention the rule about animals at the facility," she said drily. "And we can't leave her at the house while we're both here all the time. I assume this means we're about to become co-conspirators?"

"It's a stupid rule anyway."

She grinned. "Apparently we live in a very important strategic, political, and scientific location, and they don't want animals running loose inside it."

"And yet they let Wilson walk around," Bucky grumbled.

Maggie laughed so hard she had to put Artemis down, and they watched the three legged puppy amble-walk-fall across the room toward the wide window. Bucky wrapped his arm around Maggie's waist.

"I hope you realize the irony of having two humans and a dog with only" – she counted – "nine limbs between them."

"That's plenty of limbs. Who needs 'em?" He nodded across the room as Artemis reached around to bite her own tail. "Artemis sure doesn't."

"Alright," Maggie breathed with a laugh. "Let's hatch some plans."

* * *

Maggie and Bucky spent the next few days kitting out their shared apartment with everything a dog might need – bowls, food, a bed, a bath, treats, and probably way too many dog toys. They did the same at their house on the lake. They found a vet in a nearby small town who promised to be discreet, and within the space of a week read up everything they could about caring for dogs. And, using the espionage skills they had learned from HYDRA, they kept every new change a secret from everyone they worked and lived with. All the dog equipment could be hidden in the space of two minutes, and they worked out how to plan walks and outside time around the facility schedule. Things were easier at the lake house, but they still kept things discreet.

If Maggie hadn't fallen in love with Artemis in their first meeting, she certainly had by the end of the first day. Though still young and clumsy, Artemis was an intelligent, affectionate, curious dog. She scoped out every inch of her new living space and dug her wet nose into each corner and narrow space. She responded well to the initial training Maggie and Bucky gave her (not allowed on the bed, only allowed on the couch when invited, don't pee inside), and seemed to crave affection and all the food she could get her paws on. Bucky was initially much better with the training and feeding since he'd grown up around neighbor's dogs in Brooklyn, but Maggie watched him carefully and quickly learned the ropes.

The first night, Maggie and Bucky settled Artemis into her soft grey dog bed and watched her go to sleep with her nose tucked under her foreleg. They'd intended to go to their own bed to sleep, but when they woke up in the morning they were still sitting on either side of the dog bed on the floor, propped against each other with their hands clasped.

As the days and weeks passed Artemis grew upwards and outwards, slowing growing into her paws and putting on muscle. She got better at walking, and Maggie and Bucky taught her how to climb up stairs and jump on the couch. Artemis had no pain or joint problems from her missing leg, though she seemed to get tired easily. They took walks through the forest, and if Artemis got too tired on the way back either Maggie or Bucky would put her on their shoulder and carry her home.

"The good thing is that we'll be able to do this no matter how big she gets," Maggie reflected with satisfaction as she carried the panting Artemis on her right shoulder. "This is an excellent use for super serum."

Bucky found a quiet place by the lake at the facility for Artemis to swim, and she took to the water with such eagerness that they gave her the pet name Fish. She loved the lake at their house upstate.

Artemis liked Bucky's arm, and Maggie's leg and wings. She licked the arm whenever she got the chance so Bucky started carrying around wipes specifically to clean up dog slobber ("If only HYDRA could see me now," he laughed one afternoon as he cleaned his arm while trying to fend off Artemis).

Artemis liked peanut butter, and baths, and hiding for just long enough to give both Maggie and Bucky a near-heart attack. At a few months old they found a puppy obedience course in the nearby small town and got her used to socializing with other dogs and obeying commands. When they took her for walks at the lake house they took the long way around the lake so the Stark family in the other house wouldn't spot her.

* * *

"Darcy."

Darcy Lewis, research assistant and lab manager in the physics labs of the Avengers Facility, looked up from her lunch to see Margaret Stark and Bucky Barnes standing in front of her table.

She eyed them. "Why do you look like you're about to tell me you need my liver?"

"We don't need your liver," Maggie said.

Darcy got on well with the pair of supersoldiers. She'd chatted to Bucky at Pepper's bachelorette party and helped him knock out a mob boss, and she and Maggie worked together from time to time in the labs. Maggie was more or less sensible compared to the other scientists, but when it came to inventing she sometimes needed to be reminded to eat and sleep. Alas, such was Darcy's cross to bear.

"So what's up?" She nodded to the seats across the table from her, and Bucky and Maggie sat. Their faces were serious and… nervous? They shared a glance, and then looked back at Darcy.

"Darcy," Bucky said again. And then stopped.

"Bucky." She shifted her gaze. "Maggie. Is this an intervention for something?"

"No," Maggie said, then sighed and bit the bullet. "There's an Avengers mission coming up. We'll probably be flying out in the next few hours."

"I know," Darcy said. "I work in the operations room sometimes and they've asked me to help out."

Maggie and Bucky shared another glance. "Will you need to be in there the whole time?"

She shrugged. "I'm not essential staff, so probably not." A terrible thought occurred to her. "Wait, you're not asking me to come on this mission are you? Why would you–"

Bucky held up his metal hand. "We're not." He glanced once more at Maggie, and then turned back. "We need your help."

She eyed them. "You need _my _help? What can I do that a pair of super soldiers can't? Apart from catch the common cold?"

Bucky leaned forward. "Alright, so… we've been keeping a secret."

* * *

Darcy ducked in and out of the Stark/Barnes apartment for the entirety of the mission, reveling in playing with the adorable three legged puppy. Maggie and Bucky had the _best _secrets.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. (who was apparently keeping the secret as well, as long as Artemis caused no issues) helped her with her questions about rules for the puppy and where certain things were kept.

After the two day mission Maggie and Bucky returned to much excitement and licking from Artemis, and gave Darcy a huge bouquet of flowers and a promise she could visit Artemis whenever she liked. Jane saw the flowers and asked if she had a boyfriend she didn't know about, and Darcy replied: "No, but I have met the love of my life." Jane looked confused, but then her machines beeped so boyfriends and flowers were forgotten.

* * *

Wanda was the first to figure it out. Maggie had noticed her suspicious and confused glances for a while now, and they'd once had a close call in the forest while Maggie and Bucky were walking Artemis. Maggie overheard a conversation between Wanda and Vision in the kitchen:

"I can sense… another mind in the facility. One I can't account for."

"An intruder?" Vision asked, alarmed.

"I'm not sure. This mind is… difficult to read. I can't catch any thoughts familiar to me, and I'm very confused but I don't think the mind is dangerous. I don't know what to do."

"Stay alert to your surroundings. And the moment you sense any danger you can alert F.R.I.D.A.Y. or any of the rest of us, you know that."

"… I know."

So when Wanda appeared at Maggie's door one evening, her shoulders straight and her face determined, Maggie just sighed and let her in.

Wanda took one look at Artemis half-draped over Bucky's lap on the couch and exclaimed: "I knew it!"

Bucky glanced up with wide eyes, then shot Maggie a bewildered look.

She shrugged at him. "We could hardly expect to keep Artemis a secret from an advanced telepath forever."

Bucky turned back to Wanda and his metal hand curved over Artemis's back. "She's a secret," he said firmly.

Wanda's look of righteous vindication faded and she walked toward the couch. She wore dark jeans, boots crusted with mud, and a soft mauve hoodie – she must have been wandering the facility in search of the unfamiliar mind. Maggie followed her to the couch and watched her warm brown eyes soften as she looked down at the snoozing Artemis. Bucky tried to pretend he was strict on boundaries with Artemis, but they spent most of their time together lying on the couch, watching TV or reading a book (well, Bucky read the book, and Artemis stared at Bucky's face as if he'd hung the moon).

"What's her name?" Wanda murmured.

"Artemis."

Artemis's ears perked up and she looked first at Bucky, then turned and saw Wanda. Her tail started to wag.

Wanda cocked her head and smiled. "She recognizes her name."

"I should hope so, we've only been trying to train her every day," Bucky said wryly. Artemis had proved true to her breed – intelligent, eager to please, but in need of careful training.

"No, I mean…" Wanda moved again slowly, sitting on the couch beside Bucky. She didn't take her eyes off Artemis. "I can sense her mind."

"What's it like?" Bucky asked. Artemis wriggled to her feet and hopped across the couch toward Wanda, wagging her tail when she got the attention was after.

Wanda smiled as she scratched Artemis's ears. "I haven't been around many animals, which is why it took me so long to figure it out. But her mind is… warm. More unfocused than a human mind, more impulse-driven, but filled with affection." Artemis pushed her way into Wanda's lap and slumped, baring her stomach. Wanda smiled and started scratching her belly. "She likes that."

"Don't need to be a telepath to work that out," Maggie smiled. "You'll keep her a secret?"

"Of course," Wanda said with a wave of her hand. But then she looked up and glanced between Bucky and Maggie wryly. "You really think you can keep her a secret from everyone else for so long?"

Maggie shrugged. "I've actually been working on loosening the rules about animals – suggesting we start working with scent dogs, therapy animals, that sort of thing."

"Espionage and internal manipulation," Wanda said with a smirk. "Clever."

"Well now you're making me sound like an evil mastermind," Maggie said. She leaned over the back of the couch and scratched the underside of Artemis's jaw. "I just want to make sure Artemis has a home that's safe, where people love her."

Wanda closed her eyes. "She already has one."

* * *

Vision, who sometimes seemed like a telepath himself when it came to Wanda, figured it out pretty soon after that. He was reticent about breaking the facility rules, but it only took an afternoon in the forest with Artemis while Wanda described the unfocused, warm affection she sensed in Artemis, for him to agree to keep the secret. He seemed bemused by Artemis, and Artemis by him – Artemis spent a good deal of time just sniffing him the first time she met him, but seemed to warm to him once he'd been taught how to pat her. She didn't seem to notice the difference between his 'human' form and his maroon android form. Artemis was the first household pet Vision had ever properly met, and he seemed to enjoy watching her run and play and interact with the world.

"Her ability to adapt to her missing leg is remarkable," he commented one morning as he walked through the forest with Maggie and Artemis. "As far as I can tell it has had no ill effect on her health or ability."

"Apparently that's common for three legged dogs. They just… keep on going." Artemis ran three rings around Maggie and Vision, paused briefly to stick her head between Vision's knees, and then darted into the underbrush to sniff a pinecone. "A prosthetic would just slow her down." Maggie kicked her own prosthetic through a pile of leaves.

"Do you think that's why Bucky chose her?" Vision wondered. "The leg?"

Maggie smiled. "The way he tells it, Artemis chose _him. _But… yes, I think it would be disingenuous to say that the similarity had nothing to do with it. He saw an abandoned dog who'd lost a limb in an accident, alone in the world, and…" she took a deep breath. "I think if we go much farther down this comparison I'll get very sad."

Vision cocked his head at her. "And now both Bucky and Artemis have you."

She ducked her head and smiled. "And I have them."

Then Artemis ran directly into a massive, muddy puddle, and her smile turned into an exasperated sigh.

* * *

Five months in, Natasha noticed a single dog hair on Bucky's jeans.

Maggie and Bucky returned to their apartment later that day to find the former assassin sitting on their couch with the now fairly large Artemis in her lap and one eyebrow raised.

Maggie and Bucky reacted poorly to seeing an intruder in their home.

Once Bucky had put away his knife and Maggie had retracted her wings, Bucky held up a hand. "Natasha, we–"

"I want visitation rights," Natasha said.

Maggie and Bucky glanced at each other. "What?"

"At least one weekly walk," she clarified. "And I'll keep this a secret."

Maggie and Bucky shared one last glance then turned back to Natasha.

"Of course," Maggie said.

Bucky eyed Artemis, who lay across the Black Widow's lap in a state of near bliss with her legs splayed and her eyes closed. He looked back up at Natasha. "Didn't take you for a dog person."

"No one ever does." Natasha gently lifted Artemis (not such a simple feat any more, as she was over 50 pounds and 19 inches tall at the shoulder) and set her on the ground. Artemis seemed displeased at having to stand on her own three legs, but after shaking herself she looked up, spotted Bucky and Maggie by the door, and loped over with an excited whine.

"I'll be back on Saturday to walk her," Natasha said, and with one more eyebrow arch she strode toward the front door. Artemis looked up hopefully and Natasha paused for a second to give her one last pet between her ears before leaving the apartment.

Maggie and Bucky looked from the closed door, to each other, to the lanky dog sitting on the floor and wagging her tail.

Bucky pointed at Artemis. "Some guard dog you are."

She leaped forward to lick his metal finger.

* * *

After that, Bucky decided to tell Steve. He'd noticed his oldest friend moping around in his off hours at the Facility, and Maggie agreed that the one hundred year old could do with some creature comfort.

But first, Bucky had to convince Steve to overlook the facility rule about animals. Maggie drafted conversation tactics to guilt, entice, and threaten Steve into not exposing Artemis, but Bucky insisted that that wouldn't be necessary.

It turned out he was right. Steve, who had been breaking rules his whole life, readily agreed to allowing Artemis to keep living in the facility in secret.

It turned out that Artemis couldn't quite keep up with Steve on his early morning runs, but Steve didn't mind slowing down the pace. He took a photo of Artemis asleep on his shield, her limbs askew as she drooled on the Vibranium, and he was only narrowly persuaded not to make the photo his phone background.

* * *

One morning, Sam was walking through the residential area when he asked: "F.R.I.D.A.Y., where's Steve at?"

"Captain Rogers is currently in Ms Stark and Sergeant Barnes's residential area, along with its other usual occupants."

"Cheers."

Unbeknownst to Sam F.R.I.D.A.Y. alerted the occupants of the apartment to his incoming presence, which was followed by a short, hurried conversation and a mutual agreement.

Sam had never been in Maggie and Bucky's private quarters at the facility before (though he'd visited their house), but he knew where it was. He knocked on the heavy metal door (remembering that this used to be a secure holding facility), waited for it to slide open and then walked inside.

This apartment was the same basic design as the rest – wide open spaces, modern furniture, soft grey walls. Barnes and Maggie had a much bigger window that took up most of the opposite wall, offering a view of the forest, and there was a strange looking metal statue of wings silhouetted against the glass. They'd knocked down a wall into the next apartment over to expand it once Bucky moved in, and had decorated it with small touches – ornaments, mementos (he spotted a few postcards that looked as if they were from places she and Bucky had been while on the run), colorful art. This was the home of people discovering and reinforcing who they were.

Sam took all this in within the space of a second before his eyes settled on what was currently happening on a dark blue rug in the middle of the floor: Maggie and Steve sat cross legged on the ground, tossing an orange chew toy back and forth as a black and tan dog with three legs chased it.

Sam froze. "Please tell me a wizard hasn't turned Barnes into a dog."

Maggie promptly lost the toy to the dog as she doubled over laughing, and after glancing from the dog to Sam's bewildered face Steve began to laugh as well. The dog propped its single foreleg on Steve's knee and started licking his face.

Sam caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Barnes's head – his real, human head – look over the back of the couch. He was wearing his usual 'Sam' face: unimpressed and slightly annoyed, covering up his amusement. "She's a _girl_, Wilson," Bucky said as he pointed at the dog. "Anyway, you really think I'd look like that as a dog?"

Sam let out a breath, relieved that he didn't have to put up with any magic bullshit today. He looked from Barnes, horizontal on the couch with his metal arm hanging off the side, to the dog which Steve was currently trying to fend off. "There are… similarities."

Barnes's eyebrows rose. "Like?"

"You're both very hairy." Sam walked over to the rug. The dog abruptly spun away from Steve and loped up to Sam, her ears perked and her mouth open in a friendly grin. "Hello," he said. "What's your name?" He greeted her with a scratch between the ears.

"This is Artemis," Maggie said, her eyes sharp. "She's a secret."

"Sure," Sam shrugged. He'd had plenty of pets growing up, and he didn't see why a dog couldn't live in the residential area of the facility. Artemis loped behind Sam and stuck her head between his legs so her neck was between his knees and she was looking up at him.

"She does that," Steve laughed.

"I think she likes to try to trip us up," Maggie added, smiling at Artemis's head poking between Sam's legs.

Sam leaned down to scratch Artemis's head again. "How long's she been here?"

"About six months."

Sam didn't have time to express his shock at that because Barnes immediately said: "Wait, I haven't shown any of you the new trick she learned!", then rolled off the couch and began showing them how Artemis had learned to weave between Barnes's legs as he walked. Steve's grin was so wide that Sam worried he'd pull a muscle.

"Great," Maggie laughed. "Now she's going to try to trip me up even _more _when I take her for walks. I'm not as steady on the less-than-factory-standard amount of legs as she is."

"Well just learn how to do this then," Barnes shot back with a wink, as Artemis weaved through his legs again.

Sam cleared his throat. "Do you… do you want any company on these walks?"

Maggie smiled and raised her eyebrows at Barnes. "We're going to have to start making a schedule."

* * *

For a long weekend Maggie, Bucky, Wanda, and Vision took a van and went on a road trip to Clint's farm. Artemis sat on Vision's lap for most of the drive with her head hanging out the window and her wagging tail smacking him in the chest. Wanda couldn't stop laughing at Artemis's open mouth and lolling tongue, or the bright, windstrewn thoughts she picked up.

At the farm Artemis played with the Barton dog and the kids, and the adults sat on the porch drinking white wine in the sun (save for Vision, of course). Maggie and Bucky finally got to know the one Avenger they hadn't properly met yet, and his startlingly kind and funny wife. Wanda and Clint had a bond that was plain to see.

_Should've brought Morgan_, Maggie thought with a spike of guilt. But if Morgan found out about Artemis then Tony found out, and the facility found out, and then… well. Maggie would just have to come up with a really great Christmas present this year. She might have to go to space again.

"Y'know," Clint reflected, his eyes on Wanda and Vision's clasped hands. "I'm really glad to see all those idiots living at that facility finally realizing that they can have a family."

"Are we counted as 'those idiots'?" Maggie asked wryly.

"Of course," Clint said. "Look at you, Stark: you've got yourself a boyfriend, a house, and a dog. You're all settled down and domestic."

"Last week she set her hair on fire and almost caused an international incident," Bucky deadpanned.

Maggie smacked him. "That is _such _an exaggeration, and also totally separate events–"

"What I meant," Clint continued, "Is that when I met Nat and Tony and Steve and Banner and the others they were all pretty much alone. They didn't see a future for themselves with other people. Then you lot all showed up." He nodded to the four of them. "And something changed."

"Sometimes you don't realize that you need something until it appears," Wanda said softly, as her eyes flicked to Vision's face. Maggie smiled at them, then met Bucky's eyes. He winked at her. She rolled her eyes and looked out at the lawn where Artemis was lying on her front, panting, while the Bartons' youngest sat on her hindquarters. Artemis craned her neck backward to lick the kid's face, and the kid squealed in delight.

Maggie shivered at her sudden rush of emotion and quickly analyzed the feelings to make sure she wasn't in a risky headspace: Contentment. Love. Affection. _No risk there_.

She got to her feet. "Would anyone like another drink?"

* * *

Artemis was usually very well behaved on walks, aside from sticking her head between people's knees and occasionally chewing on things she wasn't supposed to. Which was why it took Bucky a few seconds to react when all of a sudden her nose twitched, her ears perked up, and she suddenly took off running into the thick of the forest.

"Artemis!" he called, but got no response other than the final glimpse of her black tail as it disappeared into the trees. "Shit."

Artemis might have been just as fast as any four-legged dog, but she had no chance against her super soldier owners. Bucky tore off into the forest after his unruly dog, dodging between the thickset trees and plowing through bushes. Finally he caught up with the three-legged fugitive just as she let out an excited bark and leapt into none other than Bruce Banner's enormous green arms.

Bucky skidded to a halt. Banner stood half-crouched with his arms full of sweaty, writhing dog, his eyes wide behind his glasses. He blinked at Artemis, and his eyes tracked up to Bucky.

"You have a dog," said the scientist. Artemis licked a stripe up his arm. She looked comically small compared to the bulk of the hulk/scientist.

Bucky took a breath. "Yeah."

Bucky watched Bruce adjust to the abrupt arrival of _dog_, his arms careful around Artemis's wriggly form and his eyes wide. He watched questions form on Bruce's face.

But after a long moment Bruce just shrugged, gently lowered Artemis to the ground, and set about thoroughly patting her.

Bucky walked over and scowled down at Artemis, whose tongue lolled out of her mouth. "I thought we talked about running away," he said sternly. Artemis blinked guilelessly up at him. He shook his head at her. "You get this from your mother."

* * *

Then there came a mission where Darcy wasn't available to dogsit, since she was visiting New Asgard with Dr Foster and Dr Selvig. After a quick, panicked conversation Bucky and Maggie ran to find Pepper in her office. There wasn't much time to discuss much of anything with the alarms blaring and the Quinjet ready for takeoff, but they managed to get a wide-eyed and frazzled Pepper to agree to watch out for Artemis under F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s direction while they were gone, and then rushed off to join the team.

Throughout the two-day long mission in the Maldives, while the rest of the team admired the cerulean blue water and poked fun at the fish/aliens they were there to round up, Maggie and Bucky exchanged concerned glances. The Avengers Facility was partly Pepper's baby, and she'd always been the one to lay down the law out of her and Tony. Maggie didn't know what her reaction to a dog would be. Pepper hadn't had a chance to say much beyond "what?" and "o-okay" before they left.

On the Quinjet home, dripping wet and stinking of fish, Bucky squeezed Maggie's hand.

"It'll be alright, doll," he murmured. "Worst comes to worst, we'll buy a spot of land right outside the facility and make her a doghouse for when we're here. Or we'll just quit for good and move back home."

"_We'll _buy a spot?" she murmured back, her eyebrows raised.

He rolled his eyes. "Alright, moneybags, you will. Though I'll have you know I'm not destitute without you. Military backpay is no joke."

"I know, I'm with you for your money."

He raised an eyebrow.

"And Artemis."

His other eyebrow raised, and she grinned. "Oh, and your body."

He snorted so loudly that the other occupants in the Quinjet looked over in alarm, and he waved a hand. "Fish guts," he explained. Everyone on board knew about Artemis save for Rhodey and Tony, but this was for them and Pepper to settle.

The others shrugged and turned back around, but Sam cast one last suspicious glance in Bucky's direction. Bucky flipped him off.

* * *

Back at the Facility, Maggie and Bucky got held up in the decontamination showers because apparently alien fish intestines weren't to be taken lightly. Bruce and Dr Foster were practically rubbing their hands together with glee at the prospect of chemical analysis. Maggie was more interested in engineering than alien insides and she had to see a lady about a dog, so she got out of there as quickly as she could.

But not, apparently, quickly enough. When she and Bucky rushed back to her apartment and flung open the door, Pepper and Artemis weren't alone.

Rhodey was crouched in the middle of their living room, supported by his exoskeleton as Artemis propped her foreleg on his knee and thoroughly licked his face. Morgan stood beside them both, her eyes alight and her hands busy ruffling Artemis's ears like the dog was a machine she'd never seen before. Pepper hid a smile behind her hand from the other side of the kitchen counter.

Rhodey spotted Maggie and Bucky at the door and pointed at them. "I knew it!" he crowed. Artemis left a trail of slobber up his cheek. "I knew you were hiding something, I thought you were pregnant!"

Maggie shut the door behind her, blinking. "I'm not pregnant." She turned to Bucky. "Am I pregnant?"

"Don't think so," he said, eyes still fixed on the newcomers to their living area.

Artemis's ears perked up at their voices and she whirled away from Rhodey and Morgan, her eyes lighting up as she dashed across the room to them. Bucky scooped her up in his arms and laughed as she tried to lick his face and wagged her tail madly. Maggie leaned in to scratch Artemis around her ears and under her jaw, smiling at the wriggly, excitable dog.

"Did you miss us, little fish?" Artemis wriggled in Bucky's arms and tried to lick Maggie's face in reply.

Morgan followed Artemis over to the newcomers to the apartment, and smiled when Maggie scooped her up onto her hip.

"Hello there, Morrigan." Maggie pressed her lips to the top of Morgan's head, and rolled her eyes when her niece just twisted sideways to scratch Artemis's stomach. "I see you also missed us."

Artemis twisted to nip at Morgan's fingers, making the girl squeal.

Pepper stepped back into the living room, her feet bare on the soft carpet and her calm blue eyes on Maggie and Bucky. "I hear the mission went well."

"If you can call getting drenched in fish guts _going well_," Bucky said with an easy shrug, leaning out of Artemis's lick-radius.

"We're all fine. Alien fish are dead or heading back to space with Thor," Maggie summed up. Her eyes darted between Pepper and Rhodey, and then to the girl in her arms. "So."

"_So_ indeed." Pepper crossed her arms over her chest and her eyebrow lifted.

Maggie swallowed. "Are you going to make her leave?"

"No!" Morgan shouted. She wriggled out of Maggie's arms and ran to her mom. "Don't make her go!"

Pepper smoothed her hand over her daughter's head and eyed Bucky's armful of dog. "Give me a reason not to."

Maggie had prepared for this, but it was Bucky who stepped forward. "She's well-trained. F.R.I.D.A.Y. keeps an eye on her, and she's never gotten into any areas where she'd do harm or get in the way. She's never been in any publicly accessible areas or the labs. The no-animals rule is stupid to begin with, no offense intended-"

Pepper held up a hand and sighed. "Alright, alright. I've got bigger issues to deal with than you two getting a dog." The weary look on her face shifted a little and she smiled down at Morgan. "And I didn't want to have to make her leave."

Bucky set Artemis back down to the floor and after quickly shoving her head between first Maggie's knees, then Bucky's, she loped across the living room to stick her head between Pepper's knees and stay there. Pepper looked remarkably at home, dressed in her business wear with a black and tan three-legged dog wedged between her legs and her daughter beaming up at her.

Maggie and Bucky turned to Rhodey. He shrugged. "I didn't make the rules, and I'm no snitch."

The corner of Maggie's mouth curled up. "There's a walk schedule on the fridge. Feel free to add yourself if you like."

"Me first!" cried Morgan. She whirled and ran into the kitchen, her feet slapping on the tile.

Rhodey climbed to his feet more slowly and went to inspect the fridge ("Seriously, Wilson found out before me? You don't even like him, Barnes!") and Maggie went to start the coffee machine.

"Promise not to tell Tony?" she asked Pepper. At the fridge, Morgan batted Rhodey's hand away from the walk schedule. "And, uh... how good is your daughter at keeping secrets?"

Pepper's eyes glinted. "You'd be surprised. Don't worry about us."

Maggie smiled guiltily. "So will you help me change the rules?"

Pepper sighed, and leaned over to scratch Artemis's ears. "I'll try. But you know it's not my rule."

Maggie knew: the rule in question came from Maria Hill, and Tony. Hill had appeared at the Facility around the same time everyone else did, promptly announced that she'd been secretly dating Agent Asfour for months, and then got to work running the show. Fury was off with his bestie Carol doing who knew what.

Hill was adamant about keeping the non-residential areas of the facility strictly professional, and ran it all like an army base. She was a godsend, but if anyone was likely to send Artemis away it was her. Tony agreed with Hill, surprisingly, and Maggie was painfully aware that he'd never had a pet that wasn't made of metal in his whole life.

She sighed. Artemis seemed to sense her dismay, and gave up Pepper's knees for hers. She smiled at the warm head that appeared between her knees, and glanced down at Artemis's dark eyes. "Keep up the cute," she advised. "That's your one bargaining chip, young lady."

* * *

Maggie had faulty intel.

She'd thought Hill and Tony were in D.C., meeting with senators about the Avengers. She and Bucky wouldn't have brought Artemis to the Avengers common room if they hadn't been sure of that intel.

But sometimes intelligence was faulty, sometimes ops turned, and sometimes your bosses walked in on you as you played with your prohibited dog in the middle of a highly secure facility.

When Maria Hill and Tony walked into the common room, everyone went silent. All the Avengers were currently in the common room, as most of them had been watching the baseball game on TV. Vision froze in the kitchen where he'd been making snacks.

Maggie lay on her back on the dark carpet, with a very wiggly Artemis standing on her chest.

Hill and Tony's eyes zeroed in on the large, gangly dog with its wagging tail, and then flicked to Maggie's face.

"Uh… help," she tried. "This wild dog is attacking me."

Artemis dropped her head onto Maggie's sternum and touched her damp nose to Maggie's neck. The Avengers sitting on the couches around her looked from her and back to Hill and Tony.

Hill's eyes narrowed. "How long has there been a dog in this facility."

When no one seemed inclined to answer her, she crossed her arms and snapped: "F.R.I.D.A.Y.?"

"Seven months and three days, Agent Hill," F.R.I.D.A.Y. replied dutifully.

Hill's eyes seemed to harden with ice as she looked around at the frozen Avengers. "And you all knew?"

No one answered her, again, but their guilty faces said enough. Sam's beer was frozen halfway to his lips.

"Whose dog is it?"

Bucky and Maggie raised their hands.

Hill let out a sigh and glanced upward, as if searching for strength. "This is a _military facility_," she exclaimed. "Not only will a dog interfere with operations, it's not safe _for the dog-_"

"Please," Maggie said softly.

Hill's mouth snapped shut and she cast a long look at Maggie.

"She's gotten in no one's way," Bucky added, on the couch beside Steve. "We keep her out of dangerous or public areas, she sticks to the residential areas and the forest. She comes back to our place when we leave, so she's only here half the time anyway."

"It's not a good idea-"

"Aw go on, Hill," Steve said. Maggie's head snapped to look at him and her eyebrows shot up at his wide, pleading eyes. "This place deserves to feel like a home, and having Artemis around really makes it one."

As if she could understand them (and Maggie had her suspicions sometimes), Artemis rolled off Maggie's chest and plodded across the room to Hill, sniffing cautiously. Hill did not uncross her arms, just watched the three-legged inspect her boots, blink up at her, then stick her head between her knees.

"What is it doing."

"She does that," Natasha observed. Hill looked up and met her eyes. "Let her stay."

Hill let out a world-weary sigh and turned to Tony with raised eyebrows.

Throughout Hill's interrogation Tony had hung back, his face unreadable as he leaned against the doorframe and watched the proceedings. He had a manila folder tucked under his arm and orange sunglasses shielding his eyes.

When it appeared Artemis's fate rested in his hands, every Avengers' eyes turned on him. He reacted to the attention as he always did: with showmanship.

After a long, dramatic silence he brought his thumb and forefinger to his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. Artemis's ears perked up and she wriggled out from between Hill's legs, turning toward Tony with a wagging tail and bright eyes.

"Sit," he commanded.

Artemis sat, her tail still wagging and all of her focus on Tony. Maggie slowly got to her feet with wide eyes.

With a small smirk Tony abruptly shifted his stance, throwing up his palm in his classic 'repulsor' pose as he exclaimed "bang!" Artemis reared back, her single foreleg flailing, before rolling over onto her back, splaying her legs and playing dead. She couldn't quite stop her tail twitching.

The Avengers stared from the prostrate dog to Tony with his outstretched hand. After a long, incredulous moment, Tony said "good girl!" and Artemis bounded to her feet to accept scratches and praise.

Hill pinched her nose. "You've known all this time, haven't you?"

"Yes I have," Tony said in that universal pet/baby voice – high, excited, slightly nonsensical. "Yes I have!" As he answered Hill's question he patted Artemis all over, not seeming to mind her nosing and licking all over his expensive suit.

"_What_?" exclaimed Maggie, now on her feet but not quite sure she hadn't entered an alternate dimension. She realized Bucky was beside her radiating stunned shock.

Tony looked up, took in everyone's faces, and snorted. "Please, I knew about Artemis the second she arrived in this facility. I've known about her longer than _you_, Maggie."

Maggie's mouth dropped open and she looked around at her teammates. They all seemed equally as surprised as her, except for… her eyes narrowed when they landed on Pepper. Pepper shrugged and gave her an apologetic smile, as if to say _I've been a double agent all this time._

"I wanted to see how long you'd keep up the charade," Tony continued as he scratched the spot under Artemis's jaw that seemed to turn her legs into jelly. "I've been visiting whenever you guys are in training or meetings. Got harder once you started letting all these squares in on the secret, but we manage. And before you ask, Morgan's known this whole time as well. My six year old played you for a fool, superspies. Didn't she, Artemis?" Artemis's ears perked up at her name and she wriggled in closer. "That's right, who's your favorite? Who's your favorite human, Artemis?" The dog practically launched herself at his face and covered him in kisses, and Maggie and Bucky looked at each other, aghast.

But after a few seconds of dumbly staring at each other Maggie noticed a rising gleam in Bucky's eyes and she couldn't help it. She burst out laughing.

* * *

In the gales of laughter filling the Avengers common room, Hill cast her eyes heavenward once more. She recalled someone once wrote in the original Avengers Initiative file that the management of such large personalities would grow easier with time. She wanted to _strangle _that person.

"I'll redraft our animal policy, shall I?" she suggested to absolutely no one, and turned to get back to work.

She did stop to scratch the tall, gangly puppy between the ears, though. She was only human.

* * *

"I'm glad you're not all keeping secrets from each other anymore. It was relatively harmless, but it seemed silly to all be visiting Artemis while still keeping her a secret. Plus I didn't like the idea of teaching Morgan how to lie so well."

"Well, Hill didn't know. And it's these peaceful times, Pep. We've gotta feel like we've got some kind of intrigue going on."

"Of course you do," Pepper sighed.

They were walking Artemis along the lake shore with Morgan, just the three of them, watching Artemis and Morgan dart in and out of the water to their right and investigate the tall grass to their left. Morgan ran ahead of her parents with Artemis, laughing at the dog's antics. It was a cool day, particularly with the breeze wafting off the still silver lake, and the smooth lakestones crunched under their feet.

Artemis's walk schedule was full up for the rest of the month, so they were lucky to get this slot on a quiet Saturday morning. Tony had only been able to walk Artemis on rare occasions before the Big Reveal, usually sneaking her out of Maggie's place with Morgan for a quick ten minute walk, and never with Pepper, so it was still a novel experience. He felt almost _normal._

"I'm still surprised you took to Artemis the way you did," Pepper observed, linking her arm through his. Her wedding brand brushed against his skin. "Maggie was worried you didn't like dogs."

"I just never really saw the point of them before," he shrugged. "They need so much feeding and cleaning and _walking_, and I had better things to do."

She smiled at him. She had strawberry-blonde flyaways floating around her face, like a ginger halo. He decided not to share that observation with her.

"You do realize that you've been successfully feeding and cleaning and walking your daughter for years now?"

Tony shrugged. "I'm speaking for Past Tony here. Present Tony cannot be held accountable for Past Tony's thought processes, opinions about dependents, or misguided wardrobe choices."

Pepper rolled her eyes at him, and after checking on Artemis and Morgan – about thirty feet ahead of them, nosing around the nearby forest line – Tony leaned in to take Pepper in his arms.

"I love every part of raising Morgan. Even though she'll probably be sick of me by the time she's like, eight."

"That's not true," Pepper said softly, and leaned in to kiss him. Tony leaned into the kiss, holding her closer when it turned out to be one of those head-reeling kisses that reminded him how lucky he was to be alive, standing on a shore with his wife and daughter and his little sister's dog. Pepper leaned back and smiled at him. "I give her a good sixteen years at least."

"Ah, the teen rebellion years. That's going to be fun." He cast a glance at Morgan, who was tossing sticks for Artemis.

"I can only imagine how yours went."

"You don't have to imagine, the tabloids are probably in an archive somewhere." Pepper broke and burst out laughing. Tony was about to describe one of the more colorful incidents of his youth when Artemis suddenly started barking: not her usual excitable barks but a snarling, threatening sound. Tony looked up just as she charged into Morgan, knocking her down into the gravel with a startled cry, then took off running down the shore.

"Artemis!" he called, surprised. Her ears were flat back against her skull and her lips were curled in the most ferocious snarl he had ever seen on her young face as she tore across the shore, sending stones flying in her wake. On the ground, Morgan's mouth fell open. Artemis's barks echoed across the lakefront. She ran at nothing in particular, but there was something to the focus in her eyes…

Pepper spun around. "What is she-"

They watched as Artemis's hind legs bunched and she leaped into thin air, teeth bared, and closed her teeth around… nothing. But her teeth _clung _to nothing, and Tony found himself in the surreal position of watching Artemis float in midair, her teeth lodged in something that he couldn't see. Her hind legs windmilled and she jerked her head, jostling the apparently thin air between her teeth.

"Oh my god!" Pepper cried, as Artemis got tugged along by whatever invisible thing she was biting. Morgan climbed to her feet and took a few hesitant steps towards the floating dog.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y.," Tony intoned, and slammed his hand over the arc reactor on his chest. His armor flowed over his body and seconds later he was staring through his HUD.

"There's nothing on the scanners, boss," F.R.I.D.A.Y. told him, "I've got no sign of anyone breaking the perimeter and-"

"Scan for negative space," Tony cut her off, "Where the air _is, _and where it isn't."

"Five seconds, boss."

"Pep, grab Morgan and get out of here!" Pepper was already sprinting toward their daughter as the _RESCUE _suit flowed over her body.

Tony's repulsors were already active so he blasted off the shore toward the dangling Artemis (relaxing incrementally when the suit came between Morgan and whatever weirdness was going on) just as Artemis yelped, recoiling as if she'd been struck, and fell to the rocky ground. Tony's heart clenched in his chest but Artemis was already rolling back onto her three feet and turning, her nose twitching until her focus locked once more somewhere up the beachfront. Tony raised his palm and fired a repulsor beam.

It had been a last ditch hope to fire in the direction Artemis's nose pointed. But the energy beam connected with _something. _The beam collided with the something about thirty feet away, and as Tony watched, the _something _glitched and crackled like a static-filled TV screen before resolving into a humanoid shape. His HUD zoomed in on the shape, picking out the outline of a person wearing some kind of thin grey head-to-toe suit. The person stumbled, lifted a hand to the charred spot on their back, and then face-planted on the rocky shore.

Artemis barked once more.

"Good girl," Tony said. "Stay." He looked over his shoulder to see Pepper scoop up Morgan, shielding her with armored arms.

"Scans complete," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said. "I've got three more unaccounted-for negative space signatures fleeing north."

"Pepper, watch Artemis!" Tony shouted, and then shot off in the direction of the other intruding signatures. When he landed in the forest in front of their escape route, his HUD picking up the negative space as blurry black outlines, his fists curled. The invisible people stumbled backwards.

"You hurt my dog."

* * *

With the four intruders in custody, it was short work to figure out who they were (a group of high-tech thieves planning to steal Avengers technology), how they were invisible (they'd developed 'anti-tech' suits invisible to scanners and the naked eye) and where they were from. They'd had some nasty drug concoctions and weapons on them, so who knew what they were planning to do to anyone who got in their way. Tony and the others went after their headquarters and snapped up the rest of their group with probably more violence than was necessary.

With the threat neutralized, everyone's attention went back to Artemis. She was fine really; there was a bruise over her right hindquarters where the fleeing thief had kicked her, but she was happy as ever and relished the attention she got from everyone who heard about her misadventures on the lakefront. The Avengers fussed over her and showered her in treats and affection. Morgan, who had a small scrape on her elbow after being knocked back by Artemis's protective charge, was in danger of never letting the dog go again. Maggie and Bucky discussed training her in personal protection, if her instincts were to chase and attack intruders.

For his part, Tony bought Artemis a brand new dog bed; not the most expensive on the market but certainly the most comfortable that money could buy. Pepper had put up with nearly a whole day of him and Morgan selecting the best one.

"Tony," Maggie chided when he presented the gift, though her tone was soft.

"What?" he said. "It's hazard pay." Artemis, who'd been sniffing the bed, turned her head up to him and he ruffled her ears. "She's a proper Avenger now."

* * *

**So I think only one person guessed from the snippet last chapter that this would be a dog - good job to that person, and to everyone else? Gotcha.**


	14. The Graduate

**MARGARET STARK GRADUATES SUMMA CUM LAUDE**

_Sitting next to her in the MIT graduation ceremony, dressed in a black academic gown and graduate cap, one might be forgiven for not recognizing Margaret Stark._

_The Avenger, inventor, and survivor of HYDRA graduated today as a mature-aged student with the rest of her 4500-strong cohort, receiving the highest honors alongside her degree from the prestigious institute. It was a bright, sunny day, save for a slight rumble of thunder when Thor arrived to participate in proceedings._

_When Ms Stark enrolled at MIT she faced worldwide scrutiny: many questioned her intentions or the point of her attending college when she is qualified on all but paper, and others accused her of nepotism for finding a place at a college where she shares the same last name as a campus library. But MIT was quick to share that Ms Stark was accepted on her own merit, save for the fact that she'd been given some leeway for never actually attending a high school._

_Ms Stark's academic career, while documented in the press, has been relatively standard: she attended lectures and labs, submitted assignments, and worked in group projects with others. Fellow students have described her as "odd, but fun in class", "kind of intimidating, but… [she's] not a showoff", and "really good to have in your group"._

_One of Ms Stark's professors, Doctor Rothstein, said this about Ms Stark last year: "When you see the name Stark on your student list, you know it's going to be an interesting semester. There's no doubt in my mind that Maggie is much smarter than me, and knows much more about aeronautical engineering than me. But teaching isn't about being smarter than your student. It's about encouraging them to think, to create, and to solve problems. In that respect, teaching Maggie Stark has been a joy."_

_Industry experts have noted that Ms Stark has not been as active in Stark Industries since she started at MIT, no doubt to keep up with her classwork, but throughout her time at college she has kept up her role as a full time Avenger. Senator Hinkley stated in Ms Stark's first semester that she posed a risk to the campus as a whole, but no threats have emerged in her time there. Though, as the MIT campus student-run facebook page suggests, Avengers sightings have increased exponentially (see our gallery for images of Tony Stark, James Barnes, Steve Rogers, and Thor at various food vendors and recreation spots on campus)._

_The graduation ceremony, traditionally a time for family and friends to celebrate their graduate, was naturally attended by the entire force of active and inactive Avengers. Tony Stark, who graduated MIT summa cum laude in 1987 and has returned in years since to give Commencement speeches, sat with his family and the rest of the team in the guest seats. When Ms Stark crossed the stage to receive her degree and shake the chancellor's hand, appearing nervous but excited, the Avengers' cheers could be heard distinctly across the venue. At the conclusion of the ceremony Ms Stark's long-term partner Sergeant Barnes presented her with a bouquet of flowers._

_Ms Stark's degree itself is an unusual one. She made waves in the academic world when it became clear that though she'd chosen to study at a world-leading college for technology and science, she also intended to blend her study of 'hard sciences' with other disciplines._

_Ms Stark herself has publicized that alongside her specializations in aeronautics, engineering, and cybernetics, she has also taken classes in psychology, literature, history, languages, and political science. To achieve such a broad spectrum of learning she has taken satellite courses at nearby colleges. Her educational choices may appear random (last year she was enrolled in a medieval literature class and another class named 'History of Pirates'), but she appears to have thrived in the academic environment._

_Ms Stark's honors thesis project, titled "Science and Magic: Asgardian Diplomacy on Earth" explores the benefits and potential detractors of opening diplomatic ties with New Asgard on a technological, political, and sociocultural basis. One could be forgiven for wondering if hers is a scientific or political science thesis, and the answer is: both. Ms Stark took on a supervisor from each discipline last year._

_The thesis is privileged to contain source material from the current Asgardian leader Valkyrie, the former Asgardian king Thor (both close personal friends and teammates of Ms Stark's), a host of groundbreaking scientists including Dr Jane Foster (of the "Foster Theory"), and world-leading policy makers and diplomats. She modeled much of her thesis on Wakanda's wave-making reveal to the world in 2016. Her closing argument, that close ties with Asgard will better humanity as a whole if carried out with honesty and respect, is sure to become a seminal work in the budding field of inter-galactic diplomacy._

_MIT's graduation ceremony saw many speeches, and Ms Stark was invited to speak near the close of proceedings. She took to the podium with the dignity and gravitas the world has become familiar with since her first press conference at the Avengers Facility, years ago._

_"I never graduated from elementary school," Ms Stark began her speech. "I only attended for about a year before I was taken away from my family and my life. I don't say this to make myself – or anyone else – sad, but I wanted to put this day into perspective. I never got the chance to go to school, to study. When I was free at the ripe age of twenty seven I realized that I loved learning, thanks to someone very special to me bringing me to a university for the first time in twenty years. I'm incredibly lucky to have found my way back to a place of learning, let alone graduate with honors. And it's been my privilege to learn and graduate alongside you all – dedicated, curious people who value knowledge."_

_Ms Stark used her speech to congratulate her fellow graduands and foster a value for education. She ended with the following: "We've all come to the end of this journey, but none of us are done with learning. Whether that means we're coming back for more graduate studies or to teach in our turn, or to go out into the world and seek knowledge wherever we can find it, learning is a journey that will see us through our lives. One might even say it's a mission. Happy learning, everyone."_

_Though every Avenger attended the ceremony, they largely declined to speak to the press. The Avengers' official statement reads: "The Avengers family is proud beyond words today as Maggie graduates from MIT after years of hard work and dedication. Maggie has been through immense trauma and upheaval in her life, and to see her enrich her mind and explore her potential in this way is an important moment for the whole team. Those of us who have known Maggie since she was a child and those of us who met her as the strong, brilliant adult she has become know that she has earned every honor coming her way today, and know that she has many more surprises in store for the world._

_Congratulations to this year's MIT graduating class, we wish you all the best in your future endeavors and look forward to working with you one day."_

_The demeanor of the Avengers at the ceremony today reflected their statement's pride, though perhaps not its gravitas; Mr Stark held his daughter Morgan on his shoulders as he loudly cheered for his sister and used a series of unusual nicknames, certain Avengers were seen weeping at the ceremony (among them Colonel James Rhodes, himself an MIT graduate), and several students reported Thor approaching them at random in the crowd to ask them questions about 'Midgardian customs of education'._

_Mr Stark is tonight throwing a party for the entire graduating class._

* * *

**Fun fact: your friendly author did a course on medieval literature and a course on the history of pirates at university. So let me leave you with a quote from my buddy Chaucer: "_And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche._"**


	15. Gods and Mortals (Part One)

**Gods and Mortals: Part One**

It started in Tunisia. Reports of the incident were sparse, so Maggie pored over what she could in the Avengers operations room with the analysts: locals reported the appearance of some kind of figure surrounded by 'grey light' who'd stood in place for anywhere between one and three minutes. Initial reports suggested three casualties. And the photos of the aftermath… Maggie couldn't make heads or tails of it. In the middle of what had been a bustling market now rested a curved, shallow hole made up of blackened earth. It looked as if a giant ball had dropped and left an indent in the ground. The hole was about ten feet in diameter_. _Where there must have once been pavement and stalls was _nothing_. It was as if everything that had once been inside that ten-foot circle had been vaporized, including the unfortunate civilians. The figure, whatever it was, left absolutely nothing in its wake.

An analyst showed Maggie initial atmospheric readings from the incident site, and she raised her eyebrows at the numbers – the air was more or less fit to breathe now, but there were signs that it had undergone a sharp spike in toxicity.

"There's also readings that energy density in the area dropped significantly," the analyst said.

"Well that's to be expected if all the matter inside the zone got vaporized-"

"The drop was too sharp for that to be the only cause. And these readings go up ten feet."

Maggie bit her lip. "So we've got a ten-foot spherical zone where everything that used to be inside it is gone." She shook her head. "What the _hell _are we looking at?"

* * *

She didn't get a chance to update the Avengers on the intel before the next incident. An analyst stood up from their desk and turned to the operations hub, where Maggie stood with her brother, Bruce, and Drs Foster and Selvig.

"There's been another one in Australia!" the analyst called. "And this one's on video!"

* * *

A CCTV camera at the beach captured Incident #2. Out of the blue on a clear, sunny day, a figure suddenly appeared on the white sand. The figure was indistinct: just a vaguely humanoid shape shrouded in a hazy grey mist from which shone a piercing white light. The light shone so brightly that it cast everything else on camera into almost pitch blackness. Beachgoers screamed and fled from the shining figure. But aside from the screams, there was no noise to mark the appearance of the figure.

One minute and twenty seconds later, the figure blinked out of existence as suddenly as it had appeared. It left behind a ten-foot curved indent in the earth.

Maggie squinted at the footage, rewinding and slowing down until she saw it: in the second after the figure disappeared the air within the incident zone shimmered, like air above an airport runway on a hot day. Her brow furrowed.

"That's an energy exchange," she murmured.

The scientists around her leaned in. "You're right," Doctor Foster murmured. "The outside atmosphere is filtering into the inner. That means-"

"It means this figure isn't just sucking up the ground and any objects or people inside its reach," Selvig said grimly. "It's taking the _air_, too."

* * *

Over the next three days fifteen more incidents were recorded. Eighteen more civilians got caught inside incident zones and were utterly destroyed – there was no sign of even a shred of their DNA, or anything, inside the zone left behind by the figure. In fact, that's what all scientific testing revealed: _nothing._ Each site was wiped clean of fragments, fiber, soil, or even any chemical makeup besides what filtered into the site after the figure disappeared. The figure appeared, reduced everything in a ten-foot radius to _nothing_, and disappeared.

The Avengers worked around the clock. The scientists did every test and reading they could think of, theorizing what the figure could be, how to track it, and how to make it stop. They hadn't gotten very far. Carol arrived from the far reaches of space with a heavy brow.

Steve wanted to mobilize the Avengers to be near the next incident, but the reality was that with such a short window of action – one minute and twenty seconds precisely – there was no way they could get to an incident on time. So they hung back at the base, frustrated at each new report of the hazy grey figure. Steve focused on coordinating with other agencies and organizations.

The world lost its mind. People had died and no one was anywhere close to an answer – not even the Avengers.

On day three Steve had brought in Doctor Strange. His people had been sensing the disturbances, but Strange didn't know what they were or how to stop them. Tony balked at the "magical" assistance, but everyone else was desperate for answers. Strange tracked down archaic books and legends and coordinated with the scientific team, searching for a clue. After some bickering, he even teamed up with Carol.

Then there came rumblings from across the world that people suspected the figure was an Asgardian. The Asgardian embassy, newly constructed in Manhattan with an ambassador and a working staff of Asgardians and Midgardians, was promptly besieged by protestors. Thankfully, New Asgard went unmolested.

Thor had been on Earth during the first incident, and didn't seem to know what to do about the unfolding diplomatic disaster. Maggie was vaguely aware of Valkyrie announcing that they were convening to find out more information, but she was too deep in energy readings and satellite projections to really notice.

On the evening of day three, the figure hit New York. The Avengers raced there, but they were still ten minutes too late. They came upon a horrific scene: a blackened, curved indent in the pavement in the middle of a busy intersection, surrounded by flashing and wailing emergency services vehicles. On the sidewalk a few feet from the incident zone crouched Spider-Man with a screaming man in his arms. Maggie and Tony landed in front of him, and he looked up with wide eye-lenses.

"I webbed him up and got him out," he explained, his voice dazed. "I wasn't fast enough."

Maggie's eyes tracked from Peter's masked face to the screaming man, and down to his leg. Below the knee the man's leg had been sheared away, the line so clean it could have been done surgically. The stump was bleeding all over the sidewalk despite Spider-Man's best efforts to compress the wound, and a black, ashy film coated the incised area.

The paramedics rushed in and bustled the screaming man away from Spider-Man, who looked down at the blood on his hands. It glinted in the flashing blue and red lights.

"Were there any casualties?" Tony asked, slipping out of his armor and coming to rest a hand on Peter's shoulder.

"No." Peter's voice was wobbly, but to Maggie's surprise, he let out a hoarse laugh. "New Yorkers are used to getting out of dodge at the first sign of any alien stuff."

Maggie put her hand on Peter's other shoulder. "You saved that man's life, Spider-Man. You did good."

His head bowed.

Tony cocked his head. "You want in on chasing this foggy bastard?"

Spider-Man looked up, his shoulders firm and his head high. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

* * *

Maggie wasn't there when Loki returned to Earth. In fact she didn't find out he was back (or even alive) for at least a few hours, because she was up to her eyeballs in work.

She'd been at a convention of scientists in Manhattan with Bruce and Rhodey. They walked out of the conference room, brows furrowed, just as F.R.I.D.A.Y. pinged their phones: _Captain Rogers and Mr Stark have called an Avengers meeting. 40minutes, at the facility._

Maggie met Bruce and Rhodey's eyes. "They must've found something, if they're pulling everyone from their assignments." Everyone had been doggedly chasing up their own leads, looking into possibilities from ancient sorcerers to vengeful spirits to anomalies in the mathematical makeup of the universe.

Rhodey blew out a breath. "This better be good."

* * *

When she, Bruce, and Rhodey walked into the Avengers meeting room, mostly everyone was already there. And this crisis had really brought out the big guns. Bucky stood by a holoscreen talking in a low tone with Sam, Scott Lang, and Hope Van Dyne. Vision and Wanda talked with Dr Strange, who seemed less annoyed than he usually did. Carol stood with her hands folded across her chest and a grim look on her face, but she shot Maggie a quick smile. Natasha and Peter (dressed in his suit) stood by the Wakandans (T'Challa, Shuri, and Okoye) listening to their conversation with Dr Selvig, Dr Foster and Maria Hill. Clint leaned against the back wall with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed. He'd come out of retirement to help with inter-agency coordination. The Guardians were tied up across the galaxy, but they'd said they'd come when they could.

The team stood around the wide, light-filled room surrounded by holoscreens full of data, surveillance, and live tracking. They looked… stressed. Maggie saw lined faces, bags under eyes, anxiously tapping feet. The world was looking to this group, and this group didn't have the answers. And at any moment, a shrouded grey figure could appear anywhere in the world and suck up another pocket of matter.

The team all looked up as Maggie, Bruce, and Rhodey walked in.

"How did the convention go?" asked Shuri. She'd been invited, but had to stay back to help Tony and the others finalize their tracking system.

Bruce sighed. "We didn't learn much we didn't already know. They confirmed that the figure is some kind of cosmological being, and they agreed that it probably has some link to dark energy."

"There were a lot of 'probably's," Rhodey added.

Bruce continued: "The scientists from Switzerland agreed with our conclusion that the being absorbs every form of energy within its radius: plants, animals, oxygen, sound, light, heat, radiation… you name it. Ergokinetic absorption."

Bucky held up a metal hand. "What's that?"

"Energy absorption," Maggie clarified. "Whatever this thing is, it sucks up ambient and dimensional energy. The being's fundamental makeup is similar to nothing else in this galaxy, which is why we're looking into dark energy. There's two variants in the theory of dark energy: the cosmological constant, which has a constant energy density, and scalar fields which vary in density-"

"But we have to be looking at a scalar field of dark energy," Bruce cut in. They'd rehashed this discussion twice on their way over. "If this being is modulating its density and travelling then there's no way the cosmological constant theory holds up."

Shuri cleared her throat. "But the travelling doesn't necessarily _disprove _that. The being's energy density is low, we know that, that's how it absorbs everything around it. We could be looking at vacuum energy."

"Of _course_." That was Hope Van Dyne – she stood on the other side of the room with her arms crossed and her eyes focused.

"Right, that's what they suggested at the conference," Maggie said. "Vacuum energy, but instead of it being in the background of the universe, this being is able to concentrate it at a specific point." She clenched her fist to demonstrate.

After a few moments of silence, Sam let out a weighty sigh. "I'm not sure it's worth asking you to explain."

Maggie blinked and glanced around, wincing when she noticed that about eighty percent of the people in the room just looked baffled by the conversation she'd just had with her fellow scientists. Bucky smiled in the way he did when he didn't understand her but he found her explanations charming. Dr Strange was scowling, but that could mean anything.

Dr Foster cleared her throat. "Essentially," she said, "There's a theoretical form of energy called vacuum energy. It's an underlying background energy throughout the universe. It can be observed in vacuum fluctuations, which appear at the event horizons of black holes." Sensing her audience's eyes begin to glaze, she sighed. "It's a very theoretical and difficult-to-prove theory. But think of vacuum energy as… a dimensional force. It exists everywhere, and nowhere at the same time."

Natasha raised an eyebrow. "Okay, so how does that help us with this figure?"

Foster bit her lip. "It tells us that this is a cosmological being tied to inherent forces of the universe."

"And how does that help us?"

Foster didn't have an answer for that. And, judging by the faces of the other eggheads, neither did anyone else. Maggie sure didn't.

Rhodey pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yep, that's basically how the convention went. Everyone's got theories, and they're apparently very fascinating in terms of pure science, but we didn't get much actionable intel."

Scott Lang threw up his hands. "So what the heck are we all here for?"

"We didn't call the meeting," Maggie shrugged. "Tony and Steve did. Where are they?"

Everyone glanced around at each other.

The door slid open again.

Maggie didn't get surprised very often nowadays. She lived with a World War Two veteran and their three-legged dog, and every few months she went out for coffee with a bioengineered space racoon.

But when Tony, Steve, and Thor walked in flanking a tall, slender, dark-haired man who Maggie _distinctly _recognized from archival footage, her mouth dropped open.

Hers was probably the most measured reaction in the room.

Maggie didn't know if she'd seen the Avengers so united in dislike since they'd taken down Thanos. The entire room burst out in shouts of surprise and anger, weapons were drawn, and the sheer force of displeasure seemed to knock the newcomer back a step. Everyone with a nanotech or Vibranium suit instantly suited up.

Maggie had seen the footage of the Battle of New York (and had glimpsed some of it herself in her jaunt to the past) so she, like much of the rest of the world, could recognize Loki on sight. She had to admit he looked different – this wasn't the crazed, wild-eyed would-be oppressor of New York with glinting golden horns. He looked less… sallow? He wore human-ish clothes; a sharp black suit under a long dark trench coat, with a dark green tie. He also appeared to have a split lip and a black eye – Maggie wasn't aware that could _happen _to Asgardians.

Loki's eyes flicked across the packed room as the Avengers' surprise deafened the room – he was hard to read, not quite wary, not quite amused. Thor, in his usual mortal garb of jeans and a woolen cardigan, darted forward and held up his palms to the crowd of Avengers.

"Peace, friends!" he called. "Loki is not here for war. He… he's done a lot since he was last on Earth, and… he's changed his mind about the world-domination thing." Thor shot them all a thin smile.

"I thought he was supposed to be dead," Rhodey said from within the War Machine armor. He had three cannons aimed at Loki's head. The dark-haired Asgardian just stood in the doorway with his hands loose by his sides and his eyes glittering. Steve and Tony stood on either side of him, grim-faced.

"He got better," Thor explained.

Tony stepped forward and set a hand on Thor's shoulder. "Guys, quit the Texas standoff," he raised his eyebrows at the forest of ammunition which had sprouted upon Loki's entrance. Wanda and Dr Strange had called upon their powers and lowered into battle stances, Sam, Rhodey, Bucky, Natasha, and Maria had pulled guns, Bruce had clenched his big green fists, and Okoye had brandished her spear in front of the suited-up T'Challa and Shuri. Scott had suited up, but looked vaguely confused. Peter had lowered to a ready crouch. Jane Foster and Dr Selvig, up at the very back, were glaring.

Maggie realized, belatedly, that she hadn't suited up, though she and Bucky had slid closer together.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Thor came to us a few days ago and suggested that his supreme majesty here might have some useful advice for us since we're dealing with" – he sucked his teeth – "_magic_. Turns out he's been alive and in hiding, Thor figured it out recently." He looked over his shoulder at Loki, who listened silently. "He's like a cockroach. Just can't squash him."

"Loki is Asgard's expert on magic," Thor chimed in. "His witch-like abilities can help us to find and put an end to this being."

"I'm not a witch," Maggie heard Loki mutter to his brother. Thor ignored him.

Maggie looked over her shoulder to Clint. She hadn't been there for the Battle of New York the first time around, but she knew the stories. She knew what had been done to Clint. But Clint seemed the least surprised out of everyone – angry, certainly, glaring at Loki, but Maggie could see from his face that he'd already known Loki was back.

Maggie then looked to Bucky. He shrugged and slid his gun back into its holster on his belt. _If Steve says it's okay, _he mouthed to her. Maggie rolled her eyes at him and then turned back to the main threat.

"Tony," came Natasha's voice. Others in the room had started to drop their hackles, but she hadn't wavered for a moment. "You really want to trust _him_?"

Steve stepped forward. "We don't have to trust him," he said, his eyes falling first on the original Avengers, the ones who'd had to put up with Loki's shit in the first place. "But we think he can help. We know what he's done, and we're not forgetting the past. But we need to protect people, _today_."

Well, that sold Maggie. She hadn't drawn weapons on Loki to begin with, but she put her hands in her pockets to signal her agreement. Tony noticed and nodded to her.

One by one, Avengers lowered their weapons. Most of them only knew Loki by reputation, but it was a hell of a reputation.

Natasha was last. It took her looking over her shoulder at Clint, to see his angry acceptance, for her to finally holster her pistol. "Fine," she muttered.

Loki finally stepped through the doorway, and every eye was on him again. His eyes flicked around the room. He had dark, clever eyes. Maggie could see why they called him _trickster._

His lip curled as he looked at them. "You have multiplied."

"Yeah," Tony replied. "So we could kick your ass five times as hard. Don't try anything."

Loki spread his hands in an imitation of helplessness, but he didn't take his eyes off them. Maggie saw his attention land on those he didn't know, assessing them. He dismissed Peter, Scott, Rhodey, Sam, Okoye, and Bucky the instant he saw them, his eyes just sliding over them. He gave Hope and T'Challa a second glance each, and frowned at Wanda and Vision. His eyes rested on Maggie for a second before moving on. Impossible to know what was going on in his head. His eyes widened as he spotted Carol and her iconic suit – recognition? But then she just stared flatly back at him and he looked away with a smile.

"So what now?" came Clint's voice. Everyone turned to see him glaring daggers across the room. "The big magic expert's here, great. What have you got to add?"

Maggie suddenly had an inkling of where Loki's black eye might have come from. But then Steve shifted, and she noticed he had grazed knuckles. Her eyes flicked from Clint, to Steve, to Tony. _Hm._ She hoped it had helped them work out some emotional issues.

Loki spread his hands. "Thor has described your problem, and it's obvious the root is magical. I can offer my assistance in identifying and tracking the problem."

"How do we know you're not just trying to steal Thor's throne again?" challenged Bruce, who had clearly not forgotten the Battle of New York either.

Loki raised an eyebrow at the Hulk-Bruce hybrid. "The throne he gave up to hitchhike across the universe? It's not much of a throne anymore. And anyway, I tried being King of Asgard. I sat on the throne for years. It's not all it's cracked up to be."

Thor huffed. "You emptied the wine cellars, created a giant statue of yourself and put on a play about your own life."

"Ah, yes," Loki smiled. "The perks were good."

Steve cleared his throat pointedly.

Loki looked over his shoulder at him, then turned back to the rest of them. "Very well. Whatever this creature is, its workings are far too complicated for Midgardians to understand-"

Maggie cleared her throat. "Actually, we've developed a tracking system for the particle vibration frequency of this particular brand of magic." She stepped away from Bucky into the no-mans-land that the Avengers had created when they drew back to defend against Loki. "If we triangulate using Stark Industries satellites we can locate each site of magic use down to the closest square mile."

As she spoke, Tony stepped forward to join her and flicked his fingers to bring up a holographic overlay of the globe, with the satellites depicted in glowing red. He twisted his fingers again and yellow dots glowed on the globe where the previous incidents had occurred.

He continued for her: "We're more or less getting updates in real time, give or take a few seconds for satellite error. F.R.I.D.A.Y. will alert us to the next incidence of _magic _use."

Loki looked between them, narrow-eyed. "How is this… possible."

"Science," Maggie offered. "It's what happens when you parade a whole line of magic users past a scientist and tell them that they haven't got a hope of understanding." As she spoke she noticed the actual scientists in the room creeping forward from where they'd been hidden by territorial Avengers.

Loki waved a hand. "Not that, I'm aware of the irritating Midgardian desire to understand at all costs." He pointed at Maggie. "Who are you? Where did you come from?"

"That's a very complicated question," Maggie deadpanned in reply. "Would you like me to give you a biological, geographical, or more philosophical answer?"

Loki whirled to face Tony, seeming almost angry. "I did my research when I first came to this world, I would have known if you had spawn."

Tony and Maggie made identical faces of disgust.

Steve stepped forward. "We're getting off track. We might know where the next attack will be, but we need a plan to deal with it-"

"Yeah, _dad_, what's the plan?" Maggie grinned at Tony.

Tony elected to ignore her. He cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. "Here's the plan. We find the magic-user, and then – and I want you to listen very carefully – we kick their ass."

Bucky shrugged. "Sounds good to me."

Steve looked heavenward.

Scott raised his hand. "What if they don't have an ass? What if they're an alien without an ass?"

Maggie pointed at him. "That is an excellent question." She turned to Loki. "Hey, you know of any assless aliens?"

Loki was still looking between her and Tony with narrowed eyes. "I do not understand this."

She met his eyes and held up two hands to make it simple. "Aliens. Asses."

He frowned. "You are talking about my…?"

"No she isn't!" Bucky and Tony said simultaneously.

Maggie grinned. "No, I like my asses human. And a hundred years old." Most people in the room looked disgusted at that, including Bucky, which she considered a personal win.

"Cosmological being with devastating power?" prompted Carol from across the room.

"Right," Thor, who had been watching his brother interact with his team with a mix of concern and pride, strode forward. "Let's discuss this."

With minimal grumbling, the Avengers gathered around the circle table with the globe hologram floating over it.

It took all of them to give Loki the brief. Those who usually worked in the mission control room described each incident, the magicians gave their input, those on the combat side described what had already been done to try to prevent the being, and the scientists (Foster and Selvig were still glaring at Loki) explained everything they knew so far. Maggie let the others do most of the talking, and watched Loki absorb the information. She trusted Tony and Steve (Thor too, but not about his brother), but she knew better than to let someone called the God of Lies go unobserved.

He regarded them all with an air of superiority and displeasure, but every now and then she could _just _see the veneer slip, when he grew absorbed in what they were telling him. The sneer would drop a little and his eyes would turn to the data, empty of everything but concentration.

Soon a few separate discussions had begun across the table, while Loki looked over their work on the holoscreen before him. He flicked through scientific data and Doctor Strange's notes at startling speed.

"Your _seiðr _is so primitive," he eventually muttered. He got a few eyebrow raises around the table, but didn't take any notice.

"Means magic," Bucky supplied.

Everyone turned to him, and he shrugged. "What? I read books."

Loki's eyes flicked up to him. "Admirable, but not quite an accurate translation. S_eiðr _is magic and science. We do not pretend that one is real and the other isn't. It's how we read and manipulate the energy forces of the universe."

"Sounds a lot like science to me," Tony grumbled. Doctor Strange pointedly twisted his fingers and let off a flare of orange light.

"Loki?" Steve prompted, nodding at the readings.

The trickster eyed the data a few moments longer before leaning back. "This is useless to me." He gestured a hand. "I need to see the being in action."

"That's not possible," T'Challa interjected, "We haven't been able to get to an incident while it is underway-"

"Well I will," Loki finished smugly.

Doctor Strange _hmmed. _"Now that we have an accurate tracking system, I will be able to open portals for whoever wishes to travel through."

Loki eyed the neurosurgeon. "I remember your portals. I'd rather not."

Doctor Strange's eyes flashed.

"Okay, what's our contact plan?" Sam asked. "That thing vaporizes everything it touches."

Steve nodded. "Sam is right. We can't fight this thing without understanding it first." He looked to Carol, who jerked her chin in a nod.

"I agree. This is something that none of us understand. If _I'm _telling you to stop and think before punching something, you should probably listen."

The team assembled in the conference room began discussing their plans for observing and measuring the next incident. It was eventually agreed that Loki should go, as well as Thor to monitor him. From there, the rest of the observation team was decided. Jane and Selvig gave an idea of the kind of equipment needed to measure something like this being up close. Meanwhile, the others were tasked with setting up potential weapons, managing agency coordination, civilian rescue, and preparing for when they'd need to launch an assault.

As people began to filter out of the room on tasks and broke off into small conversations, Maggie pulled Tony aside. "Hey, where's the little terror?" she murmured.

"Back upstate," he replied in a lower tone. "No way we wanted her near any of this." He shot a significant glance across the room at Loki, who was rolling his eyes at something Thor had said. "Best not mention it, really."

"Didn't plan to. Artemis is at the sitters."

They both watched Loki talk to Thor and Bruce with a look of exasperation on his face. Maggie could see his potential power and she was determined not to underestimate him, but right now he just looked like a man frustrated by his brother.

"Is Clint okay?" she asked.

"He will be," Tony sighed. "We knew it had to be his call, letting Loki in on the hunt. He's not happy about it, obviously, but he knows that if Loki screws up this time then he's got no chance against all of us."

Maggie tapped her finger against her elbow and eyed Loki contemplatively. "He really threw you out a window once, huh?"

"Yeah," Tony muttered. "Though… word is, Loki might have been under some mind control himself. Neither of them will admit to it really, but…"

"But what?"

"His eyes are a different color."

"What?"

"Back when he was invading Earth," Tony said cautiously, "his eyes were blue."

Maggie looked back across the room and saw Loki narrow a pair of green, green eyes. A few moments of silence passed.

"You still beat him up, though," she eventually noted.

Tony shrugged. "He's still a dick."

"That he is."

* * *

Maggie didn't speak to Loki again until the being returned. She was too busy preparing scientific equipment and energy shields to worry too much about their new Asgardian friend, though she did keep about 30% of her focus on him when he was in the room.

At one point she and Bucky bumped into each other in the corridor outside the labs, he with an armful of ammunition and her with a metal contraption sprouting with wires.

Bucky touched his shoulder to hers briefly, offering warmth and support more than anything, and then jerked his head toward the glass wall overlooking the lab. Loki stood inside, closely flanked by Thor and Tony, shrugging at some question.

"I keep thinking I'll get used to meeting aliens," Bucky muttered. "But I never do."

Maggie raised her eyebrows. "This one reckons he's a god."

"If he says so," Bucky replied doubtfully. "Lot of bad blood in that room," he noted. He turned back to her. "You sure about this mission?" She'd been assigned to the observation team and he to the combat team.

She nodded. "Have to stop this thing. And Loki might have some plan we don't know about, but we can take him."

Bucky shifted the ammunition in his arms. "Yeah, and he knows that." He gave her a pointed look. "Keep an eye out."

"Oh that's good advice, I was actually planning on going in blindly-"

"Alright, alright," he said with a roll of his eyes. He nudged his shoulder against hers, and then they continued on opposite paths down the corridor.

It was at that moment that an alarm lit up the facility.

Maggie started running.

The loud blare of the alarm was replaced by F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s voice over the intercom: "_Incident located in the northwest Kalahari desert, in an uninhabited region. Observation team to the launch room._"

Maggie skidded into the launch room, which was really the testing room adjoining the labs, with her arms full of the machine she'd been carrying and her hair in her eyes. Loki, Thor, Bruce, Tony, Vision, and Doctor Strange were already there, suited up and waiting, standing in a ring around the pile of machines that had been arranged. Maggie dropped her machine and suited up in an instant, the nanotech shooting out across her skin and over her mussed hair. She dropped to one knee and set her hands on the most important machine, Foster's interdimensional energy radar.

Steve was a second behind her. He came into the room at full sprint shouting "_Go-_"

And half a second later the floor yawned open with an orange portal and they all fell through.

Maggie had trained with Strange's portals, so she didn't waste a second on disorientation. The minute her knee landed in hot orange sand she grabbed the energy radar, powered it on, and whirled to face the being.

She'd seen the footage but that couldn't prepare her for the real thing. Right in the middle of the sun-baked, shimmering desert sat a _sphere _of hazy grey matter, ebbing and swirling like the mist in a fortune teller's ball. Within the mist the vague silhouette of a figure hovered, utterly indistinguishable. The sand at the edge of the sphere crumbled and turned black. Such a bizarre sight looked like it should be deafeningly loud, but Maggie heard nothing but the faint lilt of sand shifting under a light breeze.

Maggie shoved the interdimensional energy radar tripod stand into the sand, pointed it at the sphere, and then dashed for the next machine. She, Bruce, Vision and Tony whirled through the pile of equipment, trying to take as many readings as they could in the limited time they had left. Their suits measured everything they possibly could as well.

While setting up the sonar device Maggie slid within a foot of the sphere, and every hair on her body stood on end at the feeling of _pressure _exuding from the sphere, as if it were trying to pull her in and tear her apart all at the same time.

"Watch it!" Tony barked. She jerked away.

Steve hovered for a moment before getting out of their way. If they'd had longer they could have shown him how to operate the equipment, but right now all he could do was watch and stare at the strange, silent figure in the sphere of emptiness as the sun beat down on the back of his neck.

"What the hell," he muttered.

Dr Strange circled the sphere, making runes in the air with his hands, but didn't get closer than ten feet to the being.

Thor shadowed his brother. The instant they'd landed Loki had slowly paced towards the swirling, devouring sphere, his green eyes utterly focused. As Maggie tossed a few energy readers into the sphere itself (they disintegrated instantly but she had to try, for _science_), she noticed green sparks out of the corner of her eye.

Loki raised a hand, and tendrils of green magic filtered toward the sphere. A wide-eyed Thor hovered over Loki's shoulder. Maggie kept one eye on the green light flickering around the edges of the grey mist, and the other on the Geiger counter she'd held up a foot away from the sphere.

Then a single emerald tendril moved _into _the mist.

"No!" Maggie cried.

The whole sphere suddenly lit up a bright, vibrant green, making Maggie throw her arm up to shield her eyes, and she heard a gasp from behind her.

"Loki!"

The light vanished and Maggie turned to see Loki slump to the ground, ashen and pale.

Behind Maggie, Tony let out a cry of alarm. She whirled back around, heart pounding, but then sighed.

The being had vanished, leaving nothing but a curved indent of blackened matter in its wake. The dozens of machines set up around the incident site beeped and whirred.

"Loki! Loki, look at me!" Thor cried.

Maggie turned again. Loki wasn't looking good – he'd started to tremble where he lay half-propped against his brother. His eyelids drooped. Maggie thought she noticed a flash of blue across his pale face.

Thor looked up at Strange, desperate. "Send us back."

The Doctor whirled his hands, and the two brothers dropped into the orange portal that had opened in the sand beneath them.

"Let's finish here," Steve said, all business. "And get back."

* * *

**My goodness, has it really been 7 months since I last updated? Sorry this one took me so long you guys, I've been busy with life and my other story _The Siren_ (go check it out if you haven't!), but it was a real joy to write Maggie again. I'll update with Part Two in a few days. Hope you're all safe and healthy!**


	16. Gods and Mortals (Part Two)

The rest of the observation team arrived back at the Facility to a chorus of concern, followed by relief. In between filing sand samples and uploading data readings and having Bucky fuss over her, Maggie heard what had happened to Loki.

They'd had to rush him to the medical bay as soon as he arrived, and with the help of an Asgardian healer from the Manhattan embassy they were able to stabilize him. He'd lost fluids, blood, and muscle-mass, as if the being had sapped the life right out of him. He was asleep now.

_So the being can absorb matter outside its impact radius, _Foster had noted, then looked a little bit sorry for Loki.

For now all they could do was compile the data from their measurements (all very interesting, but Maggie doubted it would help them put a stop to this) and wait for Loki to wake up.

* * *

By the time Loki was awake and well enough to walk, Valkyrie had wrangled her way out of the diplomatic disaster brewing and arrived at the facility. Maggie briefly exchanged a nod with her before the armored Asgardian disappeared into the medical bay to greet Thor and Loki. Though it seemed less like greeting than _yelling_. Maggie shrugged and went back to the operations room.

Half an hour later, the Asgardians joined the rest of the Avengers in the operations room. Loki still looked pale, but he stood on his own two feet and had that assessing light back in his eyes.

"You didn't die," Clint said from the other side of the large circle table, with a distinctly disappointed tone.

Loki spread his hands as if to say _well, these things happen._

The operations room had been a hubbub of activity, but at the entry of the Asgardians everyone seemed to sense that a Conversation was required.

Bruce was first to speak. "So, our readings have confirmed everything we know – the being creates a kind of vacuum field, absorbing every kind of matter and energy until a minute and a half later, it leaves. But we still don't know what it is, or what it wants."

Vision crossed his arms. "You interacted with the being, Loki. Did it reveal anything?"

Loki stepped up to the table, flanked by Thor and Valkyrie (who looked respectively worried and annoyed), and pressed his fingertips to the table's surface. "The being is an interdimensional leech," he explained. "These beings grow in the crushing vacuum of space, sightless and starving. Every few millennia one gets free and becomes a blight on other realms, feeding at will on life and light."

Maggie frowned. "How do you know this?"

Loki's lip curled up in a wry smile. "Aside from my first hand experience? I've read about them. There was a similar case in – in Jotunheim." His eyes flickered briefly to Thor and Valkyrie, then back. The Avengers listened silently. "But the Jotuns worshipped the leech as a higher being. They intended to cajole it, to turn it against their enemies."

"What happened?" asked Wanda.

"I don't know. The tale was incomplete."

Maggie's eyes narrowed as she watched Loki. He could be lying. She suspected that after thousands of years of practice, he probably didn't have a tell.

Steve crossed his arms. "So what does this thing want?"

Loki looked vaguely irritated. "_Energy_. Power. It's new to this realm, but it's learning. It will seek out targets with higher energy counts: animals, people, engines, reactors."

Faces around the table turned grim.

"So we need to bait it," Maggie surmised. Loki's green eyes flicked to her.

"We don't know what kind of energy it wants," Tony pointed out.

"I do," Loki responded. "It seeks the energy it was born of. It fell out of the darkest, most turbulent depths of the universe-"

"That could be some form of a scalar field of dark energy," Bruce pointed out, with a very distinct _I told you so_ tone.

"Or since it's a _leech_, more likely vacuum energy," Shuri shot back.

Loki let out an exasperated sigh and then lifted his hands. Green magic flickered into existence between his palms, taking fine shapes and patterns. "_This _is what I sensed when I… connected with the being. This is what it looks like. This is what it wants."

Clothing rustled as every scientist in the room leaned in.

The fine, criss-crossing shape etched in green light between Loki's hands looked like a nucleus, but not one Maggie recognized. She peered closer and noticed symbols in a mathematical language she didn't understand floating through the image.

Tony scratched his face. "We could work with that."

Bruce put his glasses on. "Yeah, yeah… if you help translate all this, Loki, we could… generate this power somehow as bait-"

"We'd have to build a hell of a reactor," Maggie said as she traced the curving green light with her eyes, "We'd basically be engineering the Casimir effect, which would mean reinventing the whole _discipline _of quantum electrodynamics-"

"Nothing we haven't done before," Tony said with a dismissive hand. "Remember our time machine? We could take what we learned about the Planck constant and the oscillation technology and-"

"Bring in stochastic electrodynamics!" Maggie said, suddenly grinning. Tony broke into a grin as well. Bruce and Shuri had pulled up a holo-screen and begun taking notes and drawing up preliminary diagrams.

Loki glanced between Tony and Maggie before turning to Tony. "Did you clone yourself? I find it unlikely, given that she is far superior to you physically, and a woman."

Tony's smile dropped.

Steve cleared his throat. "How long will this take?"

Tony cocked his head. "Five days, a week?"

"We don't have that kind of time."

Maggie wanted to laugh; Tony just said he could generate a previously-unheard-of purely theoretical dimensional energy generator in _five days. _But she saw Steve's point.

"We have to make that kind of time," Tony shot back. "Set up a response team in the meantime to pull civilians out of the way."

Natasha arched her brow. "And when it starts hitting power sources?"

"We'll just have to hope that when that time comes, we'll have the biggest power source on the planet."

* * *

What followed was a frenzied week of invention. It reminded Maggie of the week in which they'd made their time machine, except there were three times as many people in the Avengers Facility so she got the chance to sleep every now and then.

Loki proved surprisingly helpful. He translated the strange symbols in his magical interpretation of the being's energy, and after a crash course in mortal engineering was able to help them create their vacuum energy engine (Jane Foster had realized on the second day that vacuum energy and dark energy might be the same thing and only Darcy Lewis was able to draw her away from her notes to get her to turn her focus back on making the engine).

They quickly realized that nothing on Earth could harness the interdimensional energy – the best they could hope for was to generate enough of it to tempt the being, and prevent it from poking a hole in the fragile fabric of Earth's atmosphere.

Loki was closely watched while he was in the Facility, but they were used to so much weirdness that after a while he started to blend in. What was a dark haired trickster god amongst former Air Force pilots who could shoot photon energy out of their hands, or maroon-faced omniscient androids? So generally Maggie didn't spend a lot of brainpower worrying about him.

At least until he showed up in her workshop.

It was technically the _Facility _workshop but Maggie had come to think of it as her own, and she was currently alone, working on munitions for a potential fight against the being. Right now she was constructing missiles. The old family business.

Loki didn't make a sound when he entered the workshop. Maggie heard the glass doors _swish _open though, and looked up to see the dark-haired Asgardian standing in the doorway in his 'mortal' clothes: a pitch black suit with a green pocket square, his hair just brushing his collar.

He smiled when she spotted him. "Margaret." He offered a bow that didn't _seem _mocking. "Tony Stark's sister."

"Loki," Maggie responded. "You figured out Google." She knew that no one else would have bothered to explain her and Tony's relationship to him. She bent back over the projectile she'd been finalizing. "Did you and Shuri figure out those exchange couplers?"

"Yes, they're currently being manufactured," he said. His voice was modulated, not the sarcastic exasperation he usually used with the other Avengers. "I thought I'd come visit you in the meantime. I realized I've been… neglecting the newest members of the _team_."

Maggie didn't look up, but she closely followed his movements as he weaved his way across the various tables and machines in the room. F.R.I.D.A.Y. would let her know if he touched anything. "What did you think of Scott?" she asked as she finalized the wiring.

"Who?"

_Hm._

Loki didn't seem to require an answer, however. "I must admit to being impressed by your skills, Lady Wyvern. My brother told me of your prowess in battle. A scientist and a warrior." Maggie glanced up to see him only a few feet away now, eyeing her with warmth. She looked back down. "Truly, you are a marvel."

"I know."

She saw him smile out of the corner of her eye, and he edged closer. "Humble, too."

"My family doesn't really do humble." She turned to the holoscreen beside her project and finalized the coding.

"I wonder, are you appreciated as you truly ought to be? A woman of your skill and proficiency…" Loki slid past her, his arm brushing hers as he circled her workbench. "And they've sent you into a workshop to do menial work." He shrugged a shoulder as he came to stand at the far end of the workbench, facing her. "Were one of your skill at my disposal, I would not demean you like this."

Maggie looked up. His glittering green eyes were still fixed on her face and his palms rested on the steel workbench. "Is that where you want me?" she asked, curious. "At your disposal?"

"I would never presume to hold you as anything other than an equal," he replied in a low tone. His intense eyes dragged down, slowly, before sliding back up to her face.

"Right." Without breaking their eye contact Maggie reached down to the holoscreen beside her and hit a button.

With a shudder and then an ear-splitting roar, the completed missile on the workbench before her screamed to life. It jetted across the worktable in a heartbeat, reaching a velocity of about two thousand feet per second just as it collided with Loki's suited chest.

Loki didn't have enough time for his surprise to reach his face before the missile launched him across the room in a blur of dark leather and jetstream. Half a second later he collided with the far wall, which shuddered but held, and the missile exploded in his face (just a small explosion, really, Maggie hadn't put in the really heavy-hitting stuff yet). The _bang _echoed through the workshop.

Loki slumped to the ground, sputtering and covered with soot, and looked up just as a loudly-bleeping Dum-E loaded him up with extinguisher foam.

He made a sorry sight against the workshop wall: his hair was blasted comically back from his soot-and-foam covered face, his fine suit utterly ruined, and his hands flailed at the sudden attack.

When Loki cleared his eyes and looked up he saw Maggie standing over him. She wiped a fleck of foam from her face with her middle finger.

"You're going to listen to me now," she began in an even tone. Loki pushed himself up a little so he was sitting with his back to the wall. His eyes were wide. "If you really want to help put a stop to these magic attacks – which I'm not taking for granted, because of the _God of Lies _thing – then you need to back off. No more manipulation, no more flirting just to see what happens or because you want something from me."

Loki opened his mouth, but Maggie shot him a _look_. He closed it again.

"In the interests of cooperation, I'm going to answer your questions," she said generously. "Yes, Tony is my brother. Everyone thought I was dead, it's all sorted now, whatever. From the way Thor tells it you should befamiliar with the not-really-dead sibling situation. Secondly, I am _also _not single, and even if I was I would not be open to romantic advances from a super-old alien who once threw my brother out a window." She paused for a moment. "Sound good?"

Loki rubbed his chest, wincing. "Sounds good," he grunted. "You are not… single?"

She rolled her eyes. "Bucky."

He thought about it. "The soldier with the metal arm."

"Yes, him. And he'll shoot you if he finds out you tried to… seduce me, or whatever that was. So will Tony."

Loki eyed the scorch mark on his suit. "You already shot me."

She raised her eyebrows at him. "Yes, and I'll do it again if you don't quit your shit and get on board. Teamwork? Defeating space leeches? Not being a creepy predator?"

He scowled up at her. "Got it."

"Great." Maggie extended her hand and then looked pointedly around at the tumbled tables and machines from Loki's short flight across the workshop. "Now you can help me clean all this up."

Loki took her hand.

* * *

Six days later, they finished the engine. There had been fifteen more leech attacks, though the damage was slightly mitigated by the rapid Avenger response. Doctor Strange didn't even need them all in the same space now – F.R.I.D.A.Y. gave him the magic alert and the locations of the strike team, and he dropped portals under their feet wherever they were to bring them to the scene. One time, Bucky and Steve got portalled out in the middle of a shirtless sparring match in the gym, and made international headlines.

But they finally finished, and after some final checks by the exhausted scientists, Doctor Strange opened a glowing orange portal under the engine and the gathered Avengers – and dropped them on an empty plain in Antarctica.

Maggie flinched at the cold despite the heat tech in her suit, and winced at the bright white glare. She looked around: the engine and the Avengers had appeared on a vast, empty plateau of ice, with not a living thing for hundreds of miles. The sun glared harshly down despite the bitter temperature.

The engine itself looked somewhat like a Faraday cage, only they'd built it the size of a barn: a complex grid of metal bars with hundreds of wires snaking off it, most clumping at the central computer console. You could walk around on access corridors inside the engine, but the main hub was a containment unit the size of an elevator, obscured by the metal structure built around it. They'd be able to monitor it from the computer console.

It was a true combination of science and magic (or rather, _seiðr_): the machine comprised the science that Tony, Maggie, Bruce and the others worked with, Loki's powers, Doctor Strange's knowledge of portals and energy transference, and Wakandan science and engineering.

The engine would - hopefully - generate enough vacuum energy to tempt the leech, but not so much that it would overload the engine. Once the leech arrived, the engine's secondary characteristics kicked in: it would loop the energy, gradually weakening the leech enough for Thor and Doctor Strange to transport it to another dimension.

Maggie looked around at the Avengers; they were all out in force today, ready for anything. Most of them wore thick parkas to combat the cold - Scott had also gone in for a brightly colored scarf and beanie. Maggie's suit was designed to protect her against the vacuum of space so she didn't need anything.

Loki stood beside his brother, wearing the same fine suit he always did. When they'd handed out parkas, Vision had offered Loki one only to be cut off by Clint:

"He doesn't need a jacket," Clint had said. "I hear Frost Giants don't feel the cold."

Loki had frozen, then turned very slowly to face Clint. His face was rigid and unreadable, in a look that Maggie knew. She'd worn that look before. "Do not attempt to use terms you do not know to humiliate me."

After that frosty exchange, they'd all portalled here.

"Alright," Tony said, looking around. "No point standing around. Assume the position!"

Rolling their eyes, Avengers broke off to their assigned positions. Most arrayed around the machine, covering every angle with high-tech weapons designed for a figure made of vacuum energy, and the rest climbed into the engine itself.

Maggie met eyes with Bucky, exchanged a nod, and then climbed up the metal rungs on the outside of the engine before slipping inside to find the tertiary computer console she was assigned to monitor. She caught a glimpse of Loki climbing to the top of the machine with his brother. He'd been slightly cagey as per usual, but perfectly helpful. He and Maggie had found themselves on reasonable terms after she hit him with a missile.

Maggie found herself standing on a metal grate walkway, not so much surrounded by walls as a criss-crossing array of metal pipes, wires, and support beams. The bright white sunlight filtered through in slants and slivers.

"Alright, sound off," called Steve into the comms.

"Barnes and Wilson, in position," replied Sam. They quickly went through the rest of the team, and when her turn came Maggie muttered "Wyvern, in position".

"Stark, in position," said Tony finally. "Alright, stay sharp everyone. Here we go. Three, two, one-"

Like a tree at Christmas, the engine around Maggie lit up. She couldn't see the main cage from her position but the entire structure began humming, and the computer console before her came alive with information.

"All systems functional," reported Bruce. "I've got 10 to the power of 9 joules per cubic meter."

Maggie checked her screen. "Confirmed on tertiary."

Then the whole engine shuddered around her, and Maggie watched the data flowing over her screen spike and shift. "Contact!" she cried. _That was fast. This thing must be hungry._

"The figure is inside the cage," reported a calm-sounding Shuri, who monitored the video feed from the heart of the engine. "The structure is holding, the edges of the leech's vacuum field aren't touching the sides."

"Good stuff, now let's get started on the feedback loop. Thor and Strange, hold for now."

Maggie watched as Tony and Bruce started the complex interaction of energy transference: feeding the being, holding it there, while also sapping energy away. A column on her screen went red, and her fingers danced to manually divert excess energy to a power circuit at the other end of the engine. Her legs were going numb from the vibrations of the engine, and she no longer felt the cool Antarctic air on her face.

Her eyes widened at the readings before her. _There's more energy here than I've ever witnessed in my life. _They weren't storing it, really - just diverting and circuiting it, keeping the energy moving throughout the engine until the leech was weak enough to be transported. The thought of what would happen if the engine failed terrified her - they could blow up the southern end of the entire _planet _with the power here.

All the energy that the creature had stolen was there in the tank with it, just waiting for somewhere to go. They didn't have the technology to siphon it and it'd probably be a bad idea even if they did, but...

Her gut clenched. On a whim, she brought up the engine's camera systems with her free hand. The roof feed showed Thor and Doctor Strange standing by the central shaft, looking down at the cage below, with Loki standing a few paces behind them looking vaguely interested.

With a sense of relief, she flipped through the other cameras just to make sure, and a flash of movement caught her eye. _There_, on camera H in the eastern corner of the engine, Loki strode down a catwalk toward a metal ladder.

Maggie's breath caught. Her eyes flicked back to the roof feed - Loki still stood there, hands behind his back. Then back to camera H - Loki as well, now jumping down the ladder shaft.

"_Code yellow_!" she gasped into the comms, and then took off running.

Maggie didn't bother with the ladder when she came to it. She jumped, dropping three stories and clanging to the metal floor of the engine with her heart in her mouth. The Avengers were swearing and panicking in the comms, and after a few moments Thor let out a roar of frustration. Maggie whirled, dodging pylons and wire bundles, until she came to the base of the cage where a strange wind swirled. Her heart seized.

Loki stood before the intricate Vibranium cage with the misty sphere of the leech within it, his hands raised and green magic sparking around him. The green light swirled through the air, encircling the cage like a net of vines, brushing against the edges. The cage glowed bright with shifting lights inside like an aurora: electric blues, purples, pinks, and greens swirling inside, crackling with energy. Loki's skin was washed emerald, his eyes wide and almost desperate.

Maggie raised her specially-designed weapons, then faltered. She didn't want to make the situation worse. The strange wind inside the heart of the engine kicked up a notch, making her stagger slightly, and the chaotic swirl of lights hurt her eyes.

"Loki, stop!" Maggie shouted. "You can't hold it!" _There's not an engine or being on this earth that could hold it._

"_Loki_!" shouted Thor. He'd just dropped down the shaft from the rooftop, his eyes wide and his hair whipping in the unnatural wind. Seconds later a service door burst open to admit Wanda, Tony, Clint, and Steve.

"Cut it out, idiot!" shouted Tony, firing a repulsor beam across at Loki. It glanced off a burst of green light.

Loki's green magic wrapped closer around the cage and Maggie swore she saw the leech inside shift. The crackling aurora of lights swirled tighter, faster. The engine was shaking at its seams. Maggie wrapped one arm around a metal support to keep from being blown off her feet and her heart thundered in her chest.

Thor stepped forward, his steps labored against the wind. "Loki, end this now!"

"I can use it!" Loki shouted back over the noise of shrieking wind and roaring engines. "I could do so much good!"

Ant-Man suddenly appeared on Loki's shoulder, but a flick of green energy swatted him away. A volley of arrows met a similar fate.

Maggie and Tony shared a panicked look across the heart of the engine. He'd clamped his boots into the floor, and beside him Wanda was twisting tendrils of red magic upward, only to flinch back at the touch of the green light.

"The cage won't hold much longer!" Maggie shouted. She shifted her weapon, not sure where to aim.

Thor forged further toward Loki, his every step an effort. "Brother, Asgard needs you for _you_, not for any power you may bring!" He had to pause feet away, kneeling to grab at the floor to keep from being swept back. He looked at his brother with wide, tormented eyes. Loki didn't take his eyes off the indistinct grey figure in the cage. "Leave this leech to its stolen energy!" Thor called. "You have no need of it!"

Maggie's fingers clenched at her metal support. She was almost directly across from Loki, and she could see the way his skin stretched pale over his face and his fingers shook, as if the effort of siphoning the energy was breaking him apart.

"I can do it, Thor!" he shouted over the noise, his eyes gleaming green.

"_Please_, brother!"

Loki's fingers clenched in midair, and the cage was wholly consumed by a sphere of green light. But Maggie could see the colors inside practically vibrating, the shadow of the figure moving, stretching-

"Your brother needs you, Loki!" Maggie shouted.

For a few moments, chaos reigned: Maggie's feet lifted from the floor, the vortex swirling inside the engine now too much to resist, and the air pulsed green. No one saw Loki's eyes suddenly darting, first to Maggie upon hearing her words, then across to Thor.

A second later, with a sound like a ship plunging beneath the waves, the green light vanished. Maggie crashed to the ground on her knees and looked up.

Thor was standing, one hand on his brother's shoulder. Loki's arms were still raised but he'd let the magic go; he stood, shaking, his eyes wide and his breath fast.

Tony grunted. "Well thank fuck for-"

With a sound of shrieking metal and splintering glass the cage above them burst open. Maggie whirled to see the hazy grey sphere surging through the containment of the cage as its edges rippled. The figure inside _launched _forward, limb-like appendages stretched out toward the wide-eyed god below it.

Maggie didn't hesitate this time. She swung up her anti-matter weapon and fired, blasting the figure and its swathe of mist with a clear burst of energy. She wasn't alone: Thor, Tony, Steve, Clint and Wanda also fired on the figure, sending it ricocheting away from Loki. It passed within feet of Maggie and her every hair stood on end at the familiar sensation of _pressure_, and then-

Lightning and golden light seared Maggie's retinas. A moment before she lifted her arm to block out the brightness she saw the light converge on the leech, encircling it and twisting it up, up-

With the burning afterimage of an indistinct figure haloed by searing light, Maggie turned away.

It took her a few moments to realise that the engine had fallen silent. Her ears echoed with shrieks and explosions, and she couldn't see for the dizzying whirl of colors across her vision. But a moment later her body adjusted and she realised she was half-crouched, one arm over her head, in the middle of a still, silent engine.

Slowly, she straightened and turned around. Avengers were picking themselves up off the floor: Tony helped Steve to his feet, Clint was tangled in a bunch of wires, Wanda was rubbing her eyes, and on the far side of the engine Ant-Man sprang up to a normal size, groaning.

Thor was gone, and when Maggie looked up she couldn't see Doctor Strange peering down from the roof. _Good_, she thought numbly, _it went sort of to plan, then _\- Thor and Strange had taken the creature to dimensions unknown.

She glanced back down and saw Loki kneeling on the metal grate, looking down at his open palms. His chest rose and fell heavily, and his dark hair hung around his face. Maggie glanced over to Steve and Tony, who met her gaze and then slowly approached Loki. Maggie mirrored their steps.

When he sensed the three standing before him, Loki looked up. His face was more expressive than Maggie had ever seen it, wrought with exhaustion and anguish. His bones were prominent, and shadows hung under his eyes. Holding all that energy had been debilitating for him - Maggie guessed that if he'd hung on much longer, it would have killed him.

On his knees before Maggie, Steve, and Tony, Loki drew in a shuddering breath. "You protected me."

A long silence passed. Metal creaked, and frozen wind swirled down from the main shaft.

"Well," Steve eventually said. "You're an Avenger." He held out a hand. "We protect our own."

* * *

Two days later, Maggie squinted in the summer sunshine at the Avengers Compound as she stood on the Quinjet launchpad with the rest of the Avengers, most of them in casual clothes. Thor, Loki, and Valkyrie stood amidst them all, saying their goodbyes. They were travelling back to New Asgard today.

Loki still looked pale from his encounter with the interdimensional leech, but his bones no longer looked like they were going to poke through his skin and he'd regained his lazy, disinterested aura - though it had softened, if only incrementally. He accepted Wanda's handshake, and even smiled slyly at something she said to him.

Thor was loudly retelling the tale of how he and Doctor Strange had transported the leech to a dimension of deep space. "We ensured it found a void to fill, from where it could not travel-"

"We were all there when you planned this, Thor," Valkyrie sighed.

"But you weren't in the deep recesses of space with us!" Thor protested. "Never have I known a darkness so vast-"

He was distracted by Bruce offering him a hug, and Maggie laughed under her breath. She stood beside Bucky, their shoulders brushing, and she turned to see him smirking. He stood with his legs slightly widened to accommodate Artemis, who sat with her head between his knees. Maggie looked down to see the dog looking up at her, tongue hanging out of her mouth.

Thor made his way through the Avengers, scooping most of them into a massive hug, and ruffling Tony's hair fondly. Valkyrie and Maggie clasped hands, smiling, and Valkyrie made her promise to come visit New Asgard again soon.

At the same moment, Loki and Doctor Strange faced off to Maggie's left, eyeing each other. As Valkyrie shook hands with Bucky, Maggie watched the wizard and the god standing in silence.

"You weren't as much of an asshole as you could've been," Strange eventually relented.

"Likewise," Loki responded evenly, and then turned away - right towards Maggie.

Loki inclined his head. "Lady Wyvern."

Maggie eyed him, trying to decide how genuine he was being. They'd warmed to each other these past few days. She settled on: "Don't make me shoot you again."

He raised his hands, almost respectful, and smiled. "I wouldn't dream of it."

"Well then," Maggie nodded. She glanced at Bucky, then back to Loki. "If you're ever in need of some time away, we have a spare bed at our place. Come by whenever you like."

Maggie thought she saw Loki's surprise in the incremental widening of his eyes and his brief silence, but he hid it well. After a moment he inclined his head once more and then stepped aside - eyeing Bucky, raising an eyebrow at Artemis, and then moving on to the Wakandans.

Bucky leaned in toward Maggie. "Why'd you shoot him? Do I need to shoot him?"

Maggie shrugged. "If you want. I think I handled it though."

Bucky sniffed. "Waste of a good bullet."

Maggie smiled. She knew he couldn't wait to see if the alien would drop by their house for a visit. "It was a missile."

Artemis licked Maggie's hand.

When Thor, Loki and Valkyrie converged once more, the rest of the Avengers took a big step back. Tony, Bruce and Steve stood closest, eyeing them.

"Y'know," Tony said slowly, "I feel like there's probably a position for a _seiðr _expert at the Asgardian Embassy. We're trying to open up knowledge and tech exchanges."

Loki raised an eyebrow even as he put his hand on Thor's shoulder. "Trying to explain what I do to you primitives? I'd rather live in a black hole."

Valkyrie rolled her eyes and put her hand on Thor's other shoulder. Thor was beaming.

Tony smirked. "Think about it."

Thor raised his axe and a rush of thunder and streaking lights descended on the launchpad, blowing Maggie's hair back from her face and making Bucky lift his metal hand to shield his eyes. A moment later the arc of light vanished and the three Asgardians were gone, leaving a rune etched in embers in their wake.

Cocking her head, Maggie noticed that the embers glowed faintly green.


End file.
